Africa’s Natural Resources and Underdevelopment

This book explores how African countries can convert their natural resources, particularly oil and gas, into sustainable development assets. Using Ghana, one of the continent’s newest oil-producing countries, as a lens, it examines the "resource curse" faced by other producers - such as Nigeria, Angola, and Equatorial Guinea - and demonstrates how mismanagement in those countries can provide valuable lessons for new oil producers in Africa and elsewhere. Relying on a broad range of fieldwork and policymaking experience, Panford suggests practical measures for resource-rich developing countries to transform natural resources into valuable assets that can help create jobs, boost human resources, and improve living and working conditions in Ghana in particular. He suggests fiscal, legal, and environmental antidotes to resource mismanagement, which he identifies as the major obstacle to socioeconomic development in countries that have historically relied on natural resources. 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.