New battle lines are being drawn in the campaign against grand corruption in Africa’s mining and oil industries. Two scandals involving losses to the state treasury of billions of dollars in Nigeria and Congo-Kinshasa are testing the limits of people’s tolerance of revenue and assets theft. These issues are on the agenda because of information technology, forensic accounting and the insistent lobbying of anti-corruption groups. The Kinshasa and Abuja governments are feeling the heat in different ways.

Nigerians protested in January against the removal of the fuel subsidy by President Goodluck Jonathan’s government, forcing him to backpedal. The National Assembly launched a probe into the illicit beneficaries of the subsidy. Unless Jonathan’s government acts decisively against those accused of complicity in the thefts, activists threaten to return to the streets and trades unionists are ready to strike.

This week, Professor Willy Vangu from Congo’s opposition Union pour la Démocratie et le Progrès Social told British MPs how his country had lost over US$5 billion of assets in deliberately under-priced mining deals by British-based businessmen using shell companies registered in Crown dependencies. It made no sense for those companies to benefit from such deals while UK taxpayers were financing a $790 million aid programme to Congo, Vangu said. His calls have already energised some MPs to press the World Bank to take more seriously its strictures against grand corruption in Congo’s mining industry.