Africa’s Natural Resources and Underdevelopment
ISBN: 9781137540720
Platform/Publisher: SpringerLink / Palgrave Macmillan US
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: unlimited; Download: unlimited
Subjects: Economics and Finance;

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.

Kwamina Panford is Associate Professor at Northeastern University, USA, where he was Chair of the Department of African American Studies, as well as Vice Provost. In 2015, he was a Senior Visiting Scholar with the Carnegie "Next Generation of Academics in Africa" project at the University of Ghana. Panford provided critical input to Ghana's Petroleum Revenue Management Act and was a key resource person for developing the curriculum for the new Institute of Oil and Gas Studies at the University of Cape Coast, Ghana.

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