Why Africa's Oil Riches Don't Trickle Down to Africans

'The Resource Curse': Why Africa's Oil Riches Don't Trickle Down to Africans

Published: October 31, 2007 in Knowledge@Wharton

Africa is cursed -- with riches. In an era of rising petroleum prices, African oil is drawing new interest from major companies around the globe, says John Ghazvinian, author of Untapped: The Scramble for Africa's Oil. They see the continent as the most promising place in the world for new production. It doesn't have the huge deposits that the Middle East and Russia do, but what it does have is accessible and largely unexploited. And the oil's high quality makes it relatively inexpensive to refine.

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