Abstract
With escalating energy and raw material demands from the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) countries and increasing commodity prices in the world market, there is now renewed global interest in minerals and natural resources throughout Africa (Maconachie 2009: 73). While the control of natural resources such as oil, gas, minerals, forests, and water has the potential to confer great economic and strategic benefits to the countries where they are found (Arthur 2012), there is also increasing evidence that extractive natural resources have not helped developing countries, especially those in Africa, to achieve prosperity and their desired socioeconomic ends. Indeed, for many African countries, such as Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Liberia, the discovery and exploitation of extractive natural resources has only contributed to increasing political instability, conflict, wars, and socioeconomic degradation. Such a state of affairs has spawned what is referred to in the literature as the “resource curse.” The notion of the resource curse suggests that countries with large caches of natural resources often perform worse in terms of economic growth, social development, and good governance than other countries with fewer resources. The theory posits that countries depending on oil or other extractive industries for their livelihood are among the most economically troubled, socially unstable, authoritarian, and conflict-ridden in the world (Sovacool 2010: 225).
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Arthur, P. (2014). Governance of Natural Resource Management in Africa: Contemporary Perspectives. In: Hanson, K.T., D’Alessandro, C., Owusu, F. (eds) Managing Africa’s Natural Resources. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137365613_3
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