Failed developmental promises, ever shifting domestic elite alliances and popular demand for better living conditions contributed to the military removal of Gabon’s Ali Bongo Ondimba.
Buyers are avoiding Russian oil in response to the war in Ukraine. Can smaller producers leverage this moment to strike favorable deals with big oil companies?
President Alpha Condé’s pursuit of mining interests during the Ebola crisis may have foreshadowed his demise as he tightened his grip over power and plundered the state’s wealth.
Frelimo, which governs Mozambique, has squandered the enormous political capital it enjoyed at independence. It now remains in power through violence, intimidation, harassment, and threats.
Clashes between mining companies and communities are often about the age-old question of whether mining, with its adverse impacts, can benefit the many or only a selected few.
Tiny Guyana hoped to see unprecedented wealth this year as ExxonMobil’s offshore wells began pumping out crude. Instead, it got a pandemic and political strife. Other oil states are struggling, too.
With ExxonMobil set to begin oil production in Guyana next year, this tiny South American country will soon become unthinkably rich. But neighboring Venezuela shows how an oil boom can go bust.
Jan Smuts Professor of International Relations and Director of the African Centre for the Study of the United States (ACSUS), University of the Witwatersrand