There is, however, one set of external actors that may have a substantial impact on the future of Africa multi-national corporations. Those companies involved in extracting Africa's rich natural resources have a vested interest in maintaining stability around their concessions.
Examples abound of their cooperation with various competing factions.
Shell Oil has a documented and widely criticized history of backing the military regimes in Nigeria. Jean-Raymond Boulle, chief shareholder of the mining firm American Mineral Fields, Inc., reportedly received a mining concession after he provided a company jet to then rebel leader Laurent Kabila during his battle to overthrow Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire. The pattern holds true in areas of instability outside Africa as well, for example in Colombia, where British Petroleum has been implicated in a scandal over funding a Colombian Army unit that was charged with human rights violations. Other companies throughout Africa hire what amount to private armies of security forces, and unrevealed instances of direct cooperation with warring parties are undoubtedly far more numerous than the documented examples. As struggles over political succession proliferate, corporations face the choice of sitting passively by as war consumes investment or quietly backing one of the factions.