Africa¿s Natural Resources and Underdevelopment

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.

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.

Demonstrates how new petroleum producers can avoid the proverbial "resource curse"

1.Introduction2.The Paradox of Africa's Natural Resource Wealth3.Can Natural Resource-Related Social and Economic Maladies Be Avoided in Africa?4.Ghana's Petroleum: Will the Myth of Ghanaian Exceptionalism in Africa be Sustained or Broken? 5.Petroleum Production Challenges in Ghana6.Actual and Potential Conflicts Off- and Onshore in Ghana's  Oil-Producing Region 7.Policies for High-Value Contributions of Africa's Resources to Sustainable Development8.Summary and Conclusion