Photo: Andy Hall for The Observer.
Sarah Chayes will be talking about stealing – the central theme from her monumental book on corruption – as a highlight of the Lagos Book and Art Festival (LABAF).
The American writer and activist is the author of Thieves of State, Why Corruption Threatens Global Security.
She will be comparing notes on how the greed network wreaks havoc on the planet, with Tom Burgis, author of The Looting Machine at the Freedom Park, in the afternoon of Sunday November 15.
The central thesis of Chayes’ book is that corruption-whether in the form of diverting money from the budget into acquiring private jets or giving bribes to tax officials to under estimate your assessment-threatens global security. The terror of Boko Haram grew in Nigeria, for instance, in part because money for weapons went into private purses. Now it has spilled over into Cameroon and has involved American intelligence, French army and South African mercenaries.
Chayes was a Radio reporter in Afghanistan – where she lived for almost a decade after 9/11 – and this is where the context for the book came.
She left journalism to work for an NGO run by president Hamid Karzai’s older brother Qayum, and then set up a co-operative that made soap. But – unlike most westerners – she lived with Afghans.
Now a senior associate in the Democracy and Rule of Law Programme at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Sarah’s session with Burgis at LABAF is entitled ‘Collusion of the Greedy’. It runs from 3pm to 4.30pm at the Kongi’s Harvest Gallery in Freedom Park, Lagos, Nigeria, on Sunday, November 15, 2015.
- Culled from www.lagosbookartfestival.com
