The Petro-Developmental State in Africa: Making Oil Work in Angola, Nigeria and the Gulf of Guinea

Abstract

Focusing on local content in the oil and oil service sectors and the changing accumulation strategies of the domestic elite, this book questions what kinds of development are possible through natural resource extraction and argues that a new form of developmental state—the ‘petro-developmental state’—may now be emerging in the Gulf of Guinea, allowing states to capitalise on a resource that has traditionally been thought of as a ‘curse’. In a new moment for the extraction of oil created by a changed domestic context in Angola and Nigeria and changed geopolitical realities, new possibilities exist for state-led economic and social development and capitalist transformation. Ovadia contends that ultimately whether development or underdevelopment results from the transformation depends not only on historical conditions, but also on power relations and struggles at the level of civil society. Local content is perhaps the single most important innovation in energy policy in the Global South in recent decades. Expanding debates about state-led development and the developmental state, the concept of a petro-developmental state offers an explanation for how some of the most strategically significant countries in Africa can achieve meaningful economic and social progress

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