Avoiding the 'Resource Curse': An Analysis of the Impact of Hydrocarbon Wealth on Democratic Governance and Recommendations for the Way Forward

The ‘Natural Resource Curse’ has plagued countries with an abundance of natural resources across the globe with slow economic growth, corruption, environmental tragedies and overall underdevelopment. This Capstone project for Freedom House seeks to address the question of how Ghana can avoid the natural resource curse and manage the effects of its new oil industry through institutional capacity and governance oversight mechanisms. Utilizing this institutional framework, we will examine and make recommendations for Ghana in four areas of governance: oil contracts and the oil industry, oil revenues, the economy, and corruption. The Capstone team did so through comparative study of the best and worst practices of other resource‐rich countries.