Weszkalnys, Gisa 
ORCID: 0009-0006-4447-121X
(2009)
The curse of oil in the Gulf of Guinea: a view From Sao Tome and Principe.
African Affairs, 108 (433).
pp. 679-689.
ISSN 0001-9909
Abstract
Oil has been extracted from the African continent for many decades.1 But something quite extraordinary appears to have happened more recently: Africa's oil has come to be considered an intrinsically ‘cursed’ substance. Established theories of the political economy of oil among economists and political scientists expected oil to bring prosperity, stability, and a kind of (lopsided) development to Africa, yet in contrast oil appears to have prevented its African producers from developing, instead inflicting instability and violence upon them. This peculiar state of affairs has provoked a rethinking of orthodox theories and has fuelled the emergence of the concept of the ‘resource curse’,2 a term coined by Richard Auty in the early 1990s. In essence this is the idea that an abundant supply of non-renewable point-source resources within a nation state might actually be an obstacle to its economic growth and political order.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Official URL: | http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org/ |
| Additional Information: | © 2009 The Author |
| Divisions: | Anthropology |
| Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor |
| Date Deposited: | 07 Feb 2013 10:55 |
| Last Modified: | 11 Dec 2024 23:37 |
| URI: | http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/48320 |
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