Ghana and its oil

Dangerously hopeful

Dec 30th 2009 | ACCRA
From The Economist print edition

Can one of Africa’s best-governed countries beat the curse of black gold?

AlamyOil isn’t everything

Correction to this article

AT AGBOGBLOSHIE market in Accra, Ghana’s capital, Rose Kamina struggles to sell T-shirts in the stifling heat. “Business is small-small,” says the 22-year-old wearily. “This year we could only afford fowl for Christmas.” Then, unexpectedly, her face brightens a little. “But maybe next year we will buy a goat.”

As Ghana prepares to pump oil in the second half of 2010, hopes are rising, both among hard-pressed market traders at home and in the far-flung diaspora, where Ghanaians are quitting jobs in American banks to head back to an optimistic homeland. Oil was found off Ghana’s coast in 2007 and, even without further discoveries, is now expected to earn an average of $1.2 billion in annual state revenues for almost two decades. For a country with 23m people and a GDP of $16 billion, it could be a big boost—or a crippling blight.

Perky economic growth, a decent human-rights record and changes of government by the ballot box in 2000 and 2008 have made Ghana one of the past decade’s success stories in Africa. In 2009 it won the accolade of being sub-Saharan Africa’s only country to be visited by Barack Obama as president. Yet some people worry that it could slip back into its corrupt and violent ways once the oil begins to flow: witness other countries in the region, such as huge Nigeria and tiny Equatorial Guinea, where cliques of “big men” have stolen stacks of bounteous oil money while most of the people have been left to live in poverty. This is the curse of black gold.

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That is such a delightfully happy face.. I hope the riches do not ruin the happy nation.