Oil Age Africa

Oil-Age Africa offers new insights and critical reflections from qualitative research on the politics, industries and communities in African oil producers.

The book, a joint work of the African Development Bank and the African Union, presents a comprehensive analysis of the oil and gas resources in Africa. It uniquely highlights, through country examples, and with an African focus but a global perspective, the specific challenges and constraints facing the continent as a whole in the exploitation and utilization of its oil and gas resources. It partly draws on a model that simulates the impact of high oil prices on African economies, a model that was developed by the Research Department of the Bank in a separate study. The roles of AfDB and AU are analyzed, considering their differing, but complementary, mandates geared towards the development of the continent. Finally, the book includes recommendations on the future directions and actions for maximizing benefits of Africa's oil and gas resources.

This is a detailed study of the political and economic condition of the Republic of the Gabon which focuses on the years of the oil boom (1975-1985).

Based on thirty years in the global oil game, intimate knowledge of African history and direct experience of over forty countries, this comprehensive book shows that Africa's flaws are not the whole story, when it comes to the continent's history. A definitive yet original account of the rush for Africa's oil, this is also a guide to the hidden face of Africa. Duncan Clarke begins by placing African oil issues in their historical context before tackling the issues of power, nationalism and different parties' strategies for control that have led to today's oil scene. This book is the ultimate reference work on oil in Africa - which is vital to everyone's future around the world.

Each week the oil and gas fields of sub-Saharan Africa produce well over a billion dollars' worth of oil, an amount that far exceeds development aid to the entire African continent. Yet the rising tide of oil money is not promoting stability and development, but is instead causing violence, poverty, and stagnation. It is also generating vast corruption that reaches deep into American and European economies. In Poisoned Wells, Nicholas Shaxson exposes the root causes of this paradox of poverty from plenty, and explores the mechanisms by which oil causes grave instabilities and corruption around the globe. Shaxson is the only journalist who has had access to the key players in African oil, and is willing to make the connections between the problems of the developing world and the involvement of leading global corporations and governments.

This book focuses on the history, key industry and policy actors, and political economic outcomes in oil-producing African states.

The development of Africa’s oil has greatly accelerated in recent years, with some countries looking at the prospect of almost unimaginable flows of money into their national budgets. But the story of African oil has usually been associated with conflict, corruption and disaster, with older producers such as Nigeria having little to show for the many billions of dollars they’ve earned. In this eye-opening book, former BBC correspondent Celeste Hicks questions the inevitability of the so-called resource curse, revealing what the discovery of oil means for ordinary Africans, and how China’s involvement could mean a profound change in Africa’s relationship with the West. A much-needed account of an issue that will likely transform the fortunes of a number of African countries – for better or for worse.