Resource Curse: Africa’s Rich Oil: The New Political Scramble and Core Causes for Conflict around the Continent (Part 2)

Dec 26, 2014 | Josephus Moses Gray, GNN Liberia
View Original

The African continent which is blessed with riches is drawing new interests from powerful and influential countries and companies around the globe owing to its resources especially the high quality of oil and wealth. These countries and major actors nowadays see the continent as the most promising place in the world for new production since it doesn't have the huge deposits that the Middle East and Russia do, but what it does have is accessible and largely unexploited rich oil and wealth. The continent oil's high quality makes it relatively inexpensive to refine.
 
But most Africans are seeing little benefit from this influx of oil drillers and investment; in fact they are often hurt by exports of their countries' oil and other riches. For instance, between 1970 and 1990, countries without oil saw their economies grow five times faster than those of countries with high quality of oil. A classical example is Equatorial Guinea and Gabon, these two neighboring countries with abundant of oil and riches are rated among the poorly nations. This is directly due to abuse of riches by the corrupt elites, politicians and foreign capitalists.

Unlike part one of this article, part two of this article aims at scrutinize the fantasy  that Africa is facing a New Scramble squally due to its high eminence of oil; while at the same time analyzing the nature of economic and political changes in place across the continent. This article further deals with the importance of Africa’s riches, and the political and economic forces behind the new oil rush. It also present in-depth, incisive analysis of critical issues obtaining on the continent and beyond such as the new scramble for Africa’s richer resources, and the core causes for poverty, corruption, bad governance and sparse distribution of oil wealth.