Oil and Armed Conflicts in Africa

Abstract

Popular geopolitical representations of oil in Africa conjure up images of corrupt politicians, disgruntled populations, and predatory foreign oil companies: a volatile mix that would supposedly keep African "petrostates" locked in armed conflicts. This article queries these geopolitical narra, and offers a different perspective: while several countries-such as Algeria, Angola, Nigeria and Sudan-have indeed experienced long and deadly conflicts, African oil-producing countries have not, on average, been more frequently at war than non-oil producers. The article explores this perspective by reviewing the main arguments linking oil and armed conflicts, providing a brief overview of conflict trends, and identifying some of the major conflict risk factors. These factors should inform future risk assessments for African oilproducing countries, while motivating further research considering broader forms of violence and their geographies.

Taming the Tides of Internal Conflicts in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Role of Political Institutions and Natural Resources

“…Empirically, studies have shown a positive relationship between the revenue from the sales of natural resources and conflicts, especially in developing countries. For example, Le Billon (2010) examined Africa’s oil and armed conflict nexus and found that oil generally motivates and generates the onset of conflict in Africa. Furthermore, Anyanwu (2014) found that African countries endowed with oil but ethnically and linguistically fractionalized are more likely to experience civil conflict.…”

Natural language processing of spatially crowdsourced data in petroleum revenue management

“…The hypotheses in this article are informed by previous research. The more informed citizens are, the less negative they will be about natural resource revenue management (Le Billon, 2007Billon, , 2010Lujala, 2017;Lujala et al, 2020;Musavengane & Siakwah, 2020;Orogun, 2010). Overall, men, the youth, and the more educated seem to be more informed on national issues than women, the aged, and the less educated (Bernal & Vásquez, 2016;Lujala et al, 2020;.…”

Governing African oil and gas: Boom-era political and institutional innovation

“…Later, as a consequence of shutting down its oil production in its dispute with Sudan, a lack of oil money in South Sudan led to the factionalization of ruling elites and a drawn-out civil war beginning in late 2013 (de Waal, 2014). Unlike other African oil producers, such as Angola, with large offshore oil resources tightly controlled by the central government, the political geography of onshore oilfields, along with its territorial disputes and poor institutions, served to mire Sudan and South Sudan's boom decade in conflict (Le Billon, 2010).…”