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1. Introduction
The tendency of countries that are heavily dependent on natural resource exports
to perform poorly on a variety of economic, political and social measures is frequently
attributed to the “resource curse.”
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While the resource curse is a global phenomenon that
affects oil- and mineral-rich countries around the world, its manifestations appear
particularly stark in sub-Saharan African oil states. Whether it is the Angolan
government’s use of oil revenues to fund its civil war efforts,
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oil company involvement
in security and human rights abuses in Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger Delta,
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the role of oil in
shaping the contours of Sudan’s civil war,
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massive corruption in Equatorial Guinea
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or
the appearance of resource curse-like effects in the new petro-state of São Tomé e
Principe,
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the negative effects of oil in sub-Saharan Africa are widely noted.
It is in this context that the World Bank’s support for oil-led development in the
Republic of Chad is especially noteworthy. The Bank played an essential role in the
establishment of the Chad-Cameroon Petroleum Development and Pipeline Project and it
justified its role here on the grounds that “If well-managed, additional revenues from oil
can translate into significant poverty alleviation through greater availability of resources
for priority sectors, improved infrastructure and wider delivery of better public and social
services.”
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In order to ensure that oil revenues were judiciously employed and that oil
production was carried out in an environmentally and socially sustainable manner, the
World Bank funded three technical assistance projects (two in Chad, one in Cameroon)
along with its direct financing for this project. Collectively, these technical assistance
projects represent the most sustained, complex and innovative attempt yet to ameliorate
the assorted ill-effects of the resource curse through targeted policy interventions.
Convention