Africa’s Natural Resources can be a Blessing, not an Economic Curse
►http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/198-natural-resources/51843-africas-natural-resources-can-be-a-blessing-not-an-economic-curs
By Joseph Stiglitz
Guardian
August 6, 2012
This Guardian article discusses the “resource curse” that plagues many resource-rich countries. Extracting resources brings about little job creation and volatile resource prices generate unstable growth. Moreover, most of the wealth generated from resources goes abroad, depriving countries from revenues. Weak political institutions and corruption aggravate the problem. In this article, J. Stiglitz gives a number of measures that resource-rich countries need to take in order to turn this “resource curse” into a “resource blessing”.
New discoveries of natural resources in several African countries – including Ghana, Uganda, Tanzania and Mozambique – raise an important question: will these windfalls be a blessing that brings prosperity and hope, or a political and economic curse, as has been the case in so many countries?