Africa’s Natural Resources and Underdevelopment

This proposed book is about how Ghana, one of Africa's new oil producing nations is exploiting this popular and controversial natural resource. It is also about whether the popular resource curse and its related theories of the Dutch disease and the enclave effect are applicable to Ghana or not. This book also deals with the experiences of other key natural resource producers in Africa, mainly: Nigeria, oil and gas; Angola, oil, gas and diamond; Equatorial Guinea ( E. Guinea), oil and gas and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), copper, diamond, oil to coltan, have fared within the perspectives of the resource curse theories and the valuable lessons Ghana and other new oil produces can apply to cure the resource curse and its social maladies. This book seeks to identify, analyze and link developments in the oil industry and the global economy. It is an important objective to assess the implications for concrete domestic policies, legislation and policies with respect to Ghana and other African nations. In order words, how can Ghana optimize the benefits of oil, especially by creating good jobs and business opportunities for nationals and transform the economy away from what Charles Hill (2006) calls the ills of the commodity trap, i.e., dangers inherent in dependency on the export of cheap raw materials, such as crude oil and unprocessed gas? Some of the crucial factors to master include but are not limited to, advanced technology including 3D and 4D seismic data development and capacity to drill many miles below sea level, shortage of skilled personnel, the financial intricacies and the highly expensive nature of oil production and marketing. These and other factors pose severe challenges that African nations have to tackle to reap the full benefits of their oil. By applying an interdisciplinary perspective to Ghana's new petroleum, main questions raised by this book include who are the key domestic and international actors; what are their interests, incentives, positions and how do these affect the outcomes of natural resource production in Africa? Broad objectives for this book are a review in light of the realities of resource extraction in Africa emphasizing Ghana's case; determining what applies to Ghana and what is different in Ghana, if any and suggesting corrective measures by furnishing a blue print for Ghana and other African nations as anti-dotes to natural resource mismanagement, also known as the resource curse.