Suchergebnisse

The governance of natural resource wealth is widely considered to constitute a key determinant in whether the extraction of natural resources proves to be a blessing or a curse. What is meant by governance can span a wide range of components, while the steps to achieving good governance remain subject to debate and uncertainty. In response to this challenge, a variety of international initiatives have emerged seeking to support those striving for better governance in their countries. These initiatives range across efforts to promote transparency, to codify successful historical experiences and effective policies; to help guide decision makers in their choices, and, in some cases, to provide external standards that countries can bind themselves to. These initiatives, such as the Extractives Industry Transparency Initiative, have seen some success in spreading and embedding governance norms, ranging across revenue transparency, contract disclosure, supply chain certification, creation of saving instruments such as resource funds and building institutions for checks and balances such as fiscal rules and accountability bodies. The paper provides a review of initiatives targeting governments as the key agents of change. We find a mixed picture of success, where uptake has been strong, for example in terms of the number of countries engaging with or signing onto normative frameworks. However, evidence for causal impact remains weak and sometimes limited to anecdotal cases. We offer some critical reflections on challenges faced and potential ways forward to build on the lessons and achievements of the past decade and a half.

Front Cover -- Contents -- Foreword -- Acknowledgments -- About the Editors and Contributors -- Main Messages -- Executive Summary -- Abbreviations -- Overview -- The Untapped Economic Potential of Sub-Saharan Africa's Oil, Gas, and Mineral Resources -- The Legacy and Lessons from Africa's Commodity Price Boom and Bust -- Unlocking the Mining Sector's Economic Potential through Regional Integration and the African Continental Free Trade Area -- Looking Ahead to Africa's Resource Future -- Notes -- References -- Chapter 1 The Untapped Economic Potential of Sub-Saharan Africa's Oil, Gas, and Mineral Resources -- Introduction -- The Significant Rise in Resource-Rich Countries across Africa in the Past Two Decades -- The Untapped Resource Potential of Africa -- Unlocking SME Potential in the Mining Sector -- Conclusions -- Policy Recommendations -- Annex 1A Analysis of Trade Elasticities -- Notes -- References -- Chapter 2 The Legacy and Lessons of Africa's Commodity Price Boom and Bust -- Introduction -- Outcome 1: Economic Growth in Resource-Rich Africa Collapsed Once Commodity Prices Fell -- Outcome 2: Poverty Has Deepened in Resource-Rich Sub-Saharan African Countries -- Outcome 3: Inequality Has Persisted in Resource-Rich Sub-Saharan African Countries -- Outcome 4: Despite Significant Earnings during the Boom, Resource-Rich Africa Failed to Diversify Its Economies -- Export Concentration: The Boom Drove Increased Export Concentration -- Asset Concentration: What Happened to the Wealth of Nations? -- Outcome 5: Governance Was an Important Determining Factor in Outcomes for Resource-Rich Countries -- Governing New Discoveries and Managing Expectations: The Risk of the Presource Curse -- Managing Macroeconomic Risks -- Resource-Backed Loans Carry Hidden Risks -- Conclusions: Insights from the Boom-and-Bust Cycle -- Notes -- References.

Oil discoveries can constitute a major positive and exogenous shock to economic activity, but the resource curse hypothesis would suggest they might also be detrimental to growth over the long run. This paper utilizes a new methodology for estimating growth underperformance to examine the extent to which discoveries depress the growth path of a country following a discovery and prior to production starting. The study finds causal evidence of a significant negative effect on short-run growth and growth relative to counterfactual forecast growth in countries with weak institutions, creating growth disappointments prior to private and public resource windfalls. This effect is termed the presource curse. For a giant oil or gas discovery in 1988-2010, the study estimates an average growth disappointment effect of 0.83 percentage points, measured as the average annual gap between forecast and actual growth over the five years following a discovery. Further, the estimated effect varies by the size of the discovery, increasing to a 1.77 percentage points gap in the case of super giant discoveries. The estimated effect is inversely related to the quality of political institutions, and driven by countries with lower institutional quality at the time of the discovery, consistent with the similar long-run results documented in the resource curse literature. For countries with below-threshold institutional quality, the growth disappointment effect is larger, measured as 1.35 percentage points in annual terms. There is no measured growth disappointment effect for countries with strong institutions. Using the synthetic control method, we confirm our findings for a selection of countries above and below the institutional quality threshold. The findings suggest that studies of the resource curse that focus only on the effects of resource exploitation or examine only long-run growth effects may overlook important short-run growth disappointments following discoveries, and the way countries respond to news shocks.

Major oil and gas discoveries are often associated with excitement and jubilation among citizens and government officials. But the extent to which discoveries substantially alter citizen expectations about economic conditions in a country remains an open question. The paper combines Afrobarometer data on household expectations on economic conditions and living standards with the announcement of oil and gas discoveries in Africa to estimate the effect of discoveries on expectations. The identification strategy exploits plausibly exogenous variation in the timing of discoveries relative to the rollout of survey interviews. The study find that discoveries increase expectations of better economic conditions and living standards by 35 and 52 percent respectively. Further, the paper finds that the overall expectations boom effect pertains only to countries with weaker institutions. The paper also provides evidence that households incorporate these expectations into their migration and fertility decisions, with fewer applications in the short run to the U.S. green card lottery and increased childbirth following discovery announcements.

This paper investigates the characteristics of resource-backed lending across Sub-Saharan Africa. To shed light on this type of lending, the paper presents new information on 30 resource-backed loans between 2004 and 2018, identified through publicly available information. These loans were concentrated in a few countries, where they represented a sizable fraction of all borrowing and were typically taken by central governments and state-owned enterprises. Although the loan terms are mostly opaque, where data are available, the study finds that such loans are not cheaper than regular loans. The paper highlights opportunities to transparency and offers some suggestions for improving the governance of collateralized borrowings across developing countries.