_Iro_ t1_iua10i1 wrote on October 29, 2022 at 6:49 PM

Reply to comment by Fraun_Pollen in Megalopolis: how coastal west Africa will shape the coming century. by filosoful

Vast mineral wealth is not conducive to national wealth, peace, or development. It actually has the opposite effect. It’s a phenomenon called the Resource Curse and it’s extremely well-documented in the context of Africa.

GreatArchitect t1_iuc9jwu wrote on October 30, 2022 at 6:03 AM

Actually, not really. The resource curse has been well documenred elsewhere, like the Middle East and Southeast Asia but Africa has been to disunified and plagued by conflict anyway for the curse to take place. The resources in these nations are squandered through corruption but most are still untapped by their fledgling economies.

_Iro_ t1_iucjgu5 wrote on October 30, 2022 at 8:19 AM

What are you mean? The DRC is one of the primary sources of resource curse scholarship in regards to the role of conflict resources (blood diamonds) in sustaining intrastate conflict. I think you might be thinking of a very narrow definition of the resource curse in the context of rentierism

Southern-Trip-1102 t1_iucnbyq wrote on October 30, 2022 at 9:15 AM

How does it account for the colonization and exploitation of Africa? It seems like a confounding variables if you want to propose resources as the reason for their poor development.

_Iro_ t1_iue4bz3 wrote on October 30, 2022 at 5:16 PM

I’m not “proposing” anything as a single explanation for Africa’s underdevelopment because it’s obviously not that simple. I’m just saying that resources exacerbate Africa’s existing problems instead of solving them. That’s how the resource curse works, it only entrenches intrastate conflict and corruption but it doesn’t create it out of nowhere.