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Political Economy of African Mineral Revenue Deployment

Angola, Botswana, Nigeria and Zambia Compared


Author(s): Richard Auty
Publisher(s): Elcano Royal Institute of International and Strategic Studies, Madrid, Spain
Date of publication: 16 Jun 2008
Volume number: 2008
Issue number: 28
Format: PDF
Pages: 20
URL: www.realinstitutoelcano.org
Series: Elcano Royal Institute Working Papers

Description: This paper analyzes how political incentives are shaped by commodity revenue. It focuses on commodity rent flows as the critical link between the economy and politics, and uses case studies to track them. The author applies Botswana’s successful rent cycling to identify why Zambia, Nigeria and Angola failed. He attributes Botswana’s success in managing a large concentrated rent stream not only to ethnic homogeneity and rejection of statist policies, but also to the incentives for caution arising from its singularly precarious mineral dependence and also the unexpected stability of diamond prices.

General note: © 2008 Elcano Royal Institute of International and Strategic Studies

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