Managing Africa's Natural Resources: Capacities for Development

Abstract

This book offers a rich set of insights into natural resource management and governance in Africa. One of the real strengths of the book is the diversity of voices and perspectives that it brings. The passion for the continent’s development is evident in all of the contributions and it is an important step forward in getting us to think about resources as a potential source of broad-based and shared development, rather than as necessarily a problem; or in more extreme formulations a “curse”. In this short review I can’t do justice to the depth, variety and richness of the book, so I will focus on some areas that stood out for me that might be worthy of, or provoke future debate. The chapters display a nuanced understanding of political economy, and many are prescriptive about institutions and policies. The book is sensitive to emerging new initiatives and models from the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) countries for example. However, as chapter five shows, the long-term trend for commodity prices is still downward; the recent global commodity super-cycle not withstanding. Is the commodity super-cycle now coming to an end or will commodity prices increase again, over the medium term, as scarcity reasserts itself? What will and should be the implications of the end of the super-cycle for policy makers in Africa? Useful analytical frameworks are developed in the book to advance its agenda—the “capacity-leadership-governance” trichotomy as an axis of transformation. Capacity is interestingly defined in chapter ten as the ability to deliver on, or achieve stated goals. Other interesting concepts are also developed: such as the idea of dams as strategic stores of water in the context of climate change. The book is also packed with interesting statistics such as that $1 trillion worth of minerals and oil are extracted from the continent each year. However, the scale of misappropriation of resource rents in some countries is also shocking with less than half of total oil revenue accruing in Cameroon being transferred to the budget, for example. Three timber companies, by themselves, control 20% of Liberia’s land area. The challenge of effective natural resource management is significant in the context of such massive and entrenched power differentials and positions. Nonetheless the book also provides evidence of African states taking very proactive roles in combatting misuse of resource rents, with Nigeria indicting former US Vice-President Dick