The Looting Machine

A searing exposé of the global web of traders, bankers, middlemen, despots, and corporate raiders pillaging Africa’s vast natural wealth.

“A brave, defiant book.” —The New York Times

Africa is the world’s poorest continent and yet, arguably, its richest. Its abundance of natural resources has attracted foreign oilmen, oligarchs, and jet-setting executives, as well as local despots and militiamen—all seeking to gorge on the continent’s reserves of oil, gas, metals, and precious stones.

In The Looting Machine, Tom Burgis takes readers on a gripping journey into the dark underbelly of the global economy. He combines deep reporting with a gripping narrative, traveling from the killing fields of Congo and crude-slicked creeks of Nigeria to the anonymous boardrooms and glittering headquarters of multinational corporations that harvest Africa’s oil and minerals. The Looting Machine is a blistering investigation into the plunder of a continent and its terrible human toll.