2
The success or failure of the Chad-Cameroon pipeline project is thus of crucial
theoretical and policy relevance. Theoretically, the weight of the evidence supporting the
resource curse is compelling. As Jeffrey Sachs and Andrew Warner put it, “Empirical
support for the curse of natural resources is not bulletproof, but it is quite strong.”
8
In
this regard, the strength of the evidence supporting the resource curse thesis thus
increases the theoretical significance of any potential exceptions to it. On the policy
front, the inevitability (or lack thereof) of the resource curse is a matter of concern for
African governments, local populations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs),
transnational corporations (TNCs), international financial institutions and western
leaders. The World Bank Group (WBG) has, for example, made support for extractive
industry investment one of the fundamental cornerstones of its approach to poverty
reduction in sub-Saharan Africa.
9
Extractive industry TNCs are by far and away the
largest foreign investors in sub-Saharan Africa today. United States government officials
have repeatedly expressed their interest in rapidly increasing the share of imported oil
that is sourced from the Gulf of Guinea region.
10
The likely success of such strategies
varies greatly depending upon whether the resource curse is a powerful force that is
nearly impossible to overcome or one that can be easily managed. To date, the Chad-
Cameroon pipeline project offers the single best case study test of these questions.
Although it is too early to offer definitive conclusions in some areas (the project’s
first oil started flowing in July 2003), there is now enough empirical evidence upon
which we can evaluate the effectiveness of the Chad-Cameroon pipeline project. In
doing so, this paper directs its focus exclusively toward Chad and does not consider the
project’s impact on Cameroon. It limits its focus in this way for three main reasons:
Convention