So Equatorial Guinea’s government has resigned. Not because of a coup, not because of popular uprising, but because they failed to meet some targets. Targets. One imagines a spreadsheet in a dusty office, some civil servant crossing out numbers in red pen, and then a collective shrug. ‘We’ve failed our targets,’ they announced, as if they were a sales team at a struggling car dealership. And now British investment is supposedly at risk.
Let us pause to consider the sheer absurdity of this. Equatorial Guinea, a country that has squandered its oil wealth on palaces and Swiss bank accounts, is suddenly gripped by a bureaucratic crisis of missed objectives. This is the same country where the president’s son has a fleet of luxury cars and a $30m mansion in Cape Town. But heaven forbid they miss a target on some international development index.
The British government, in its infinite wisdom, has been pouring money into this petrostate. Why? Because they believe in ‘engagement’ and ‘building partnerships’. It is the same naive faith that led the British to invest in the Soviet Union in the 1930s or in Zimbabwe under Mugabe. The idea that a corrupt autocracy can be reformed through investment is a fantasy that keeps on giving.
What we are witnessing is not a governance crisis. It is a farce. A government that resigns over missed targets is like a chef who quits because he burnt the toast. It is a gesture, a piece of theatre, designed to fool the international community into thinking that accountability exists. But it doesn't. The reality is that Equatorial Guinea’s elite will continue to siphon off the country’s wealth, and the British taxpayer will continue to foot the bill.
This is the fourth time in a decade that a supposedly stable African government has collapsed into chaos because of external pressure. The pattern is always the same: the West demands reforms, the government promises reforms, the reforms fail, and the government resigns. Then a new government is formed, and the cycle repeats. It is the political equivalent of a hamster wheel.
The irony is that the British government’s own targets are a mess. They have failed to control immigration, failed to fix the National Health Service, failed to build affordable housing. Yet they lecture Equatorial Guinea on ‘targets’. It is the blind leading the blind.
What should Britain do? Pull out. Sever ties. Stop pretending that a country run by a family dynasty for 40 years is suddenly going to embrace liberal democracy because of a few million quid. The investment is lost, the risk is real, and the sooner we accept that, the better.
This is not a tragedy. It is a comedy of errors, and we are paying for the tickets.
