The Political Economy of the Natural Resource Paradox in Africa: Governing Extractive Industries for Sustainable Development

Across a range of country settings, the resource paradox refers to the association of significant resource wealth in oil, gas, and minerals with poor economic growth and development outcomes. The puzzle motivating this study is: Why are the governments of resource- rich states so often unable to implement the corrective policy measures available to mitigate many of the patterns that cumulate into the resource curse? The political economy literature recognizes that the main factors determining the success of resource-rich countries are inherently related to the overall governance framework and the political economy of resource wealth extraction and distribution. In other words, managing the resource paradox is inherently a public sector governance challenge—the credibility, quality, transparency, and accountability of policy-making processes, public institutions, the legal and regulatory climate, and sector governance are major determinants of how successfully countries can channel their resource wealth into sustainable development. Yet scholars and practitioners have fallen short of translating broad agreement on the ‘right’ policies into concrete steps to navigate and address the institutional and political obstacles that are associated with governing the resource paradox. This volume synthesizes the most recent policy-related insights about the interaction between the specific political economy contexts and institutional mechanisms in the natural resource sector in African five countries, i.e. Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Niger, and Nigeria. Building on the lens of the NRM value chain, it brings a problem-oriented, micro political economy focus to the governance and institutional challenges surrounding natural resource management for sustainable development.