41. Oil and Capital Flight: The Case of Angola
- Author:
- Nicholas Shaxson
- Publication Date:
- 01-2021
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), University of Massachusetts Amherst
- Abstract:
- Angola’s “paradox of plenty,” as a country with rich resources and poor development outcomes, makes it ideal for the study of capital flight. With the fifth largest economy in sub-Saharan Africa, the country is known not for what it has done with its vast natural resource endowment, but what it has failed to do with it. The country features prominently in the literature on the ‘resource curse,' as the discovery and exploitation of petroleum has suffocated the development of other economic sectors while profiting the national elite and its foreign partners. This has been accomplished notably through establishment of a powerful parastatal to manage oil, Sonangol, which observers have described as “an island of competence” yet has been instrumental to wealth extraction. Angola’s oil and diamonds also played a critical role in motivating and financing the country’s prolonged and devastating civil war.
- Topic:
- Development, Oil, Political Economy, Natural Resources, Conflict, and Capital Flight
- Political Geography:
- Africa and Angola