Can Ghana Avoid the Resource Curse?

Oil exploration in the developing world has been and continues to be a high profile and high risk activity attracting media coverage and stimulating much debate. In Governance of the Petroleum Sector in an Emerging Developing Economy, Professor Kwaku Appiah-Adu has assembled an edited volume that provides insight into critical aspects of this highly sensitive activity.

Professor Appiah-Adu’s starting point is Ghana, where he has been closely involved in national policy-making. The book makes comparisons between that African country and others as diverse as Trinidad and Tobago, and Norway. The contributors, global experts in their respective fields, explore five critical themes and propose strategies for progress in each.

This book serves as reference for business practitioners, policy makers, scholars, students and anyone interested in gaining insight into the oil and gas sector, particularly as it pertains to Ghana and other African petroleum producing nations, with lessons drawn from the global arena and international best practice.

In part II, chapter 8, Can Ghana avoid the resource curse?, Dr Inge Amundsen provides an overview of the economic and political explanations and consequences of the resource curse, presents the analytically important distinction between the institutions of extraction and the institutions of redistribution, and discusses whether Ghana can possibly avoid the resource curse by analysing existing statistics on governance in Ghana.