Sudan Cautions China Over Oil Investments

A Sudanese central bank official has warned China that oil investments could exacerbate conflicts in Sudan unless it pressed the government to engage local populations and share revenues. He also draw parallels with the conflict in the Niger Delta.
China, which buys much of Sudan’s oil, has been under fire internationally for doing business with a regime condemned in the West for its actions in Darfur, but the banker’s comments were a rare critical voice coming from Khartoum.
“When you exploit oil and resources and nothing goes to the population, then you are financing the war against them with resources and that is negative,” deputy central bank governor Elijah Aleng told reporters on the sidelines of the African Development Bank’s annual meeting.
Aleng once headed the humanitarian wing of the main southern rebel group, Sudan People’s Liberation Army, and said the south could again become restive if the local population felt it was being shut out of the region’s oil wealth.
“You know what is happening today in the Niger Delta in Nigeria?” he asked. “We don’t want that to happen in the south, but that can happen very easily, when the population feel their government is not taking care of them,” Aleng said.