Helping, but not developing
A report on projects supposed to help local people
CORPORATE images are as hard to clean up as oil spills, to judge by the experience of Royal Dutch/Shell's subsidiary in Nigeria. In 1995 the company's reputation suffered when the Nigerian government hanged Ken Saro-Wiwa, a political activist who had been demanding that the oil companies pay millions of dollars to local villagers. Shell denied any responsibility for Saro-Wiwa's death. But it also set out to prove that it cared for the people who lived in its production areas.
This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline “Helping, but not developing”
From the May 12th 2001 edition
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