GOVERNANCE AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT CONUNDRUM IN SUB- SAHARAN AFRICA: INTERROGATING WITH RESOURCE CURSE THEORY

Abstract

Development in all ramifications is consciously a human effort, which could be harnessed and actualized through governance. This paper identified the seeming stampede and backwardness of development indexes in Sub-Saharan Africa and interrogated the same with governance. To ensure manageability of data and reliability of results, special emphasis is laid on the selected countries: Angola, Congo, Nigeria and South Sudan. The study utilized an ex-post facto research design and collected secondary data through the documentary method of data collection. The data so collected were analyzed through content analysis. Theoretically, the study adopted the resource curse theory, which maintained, among other propositions, that resource-rich nations are prone to economic crises, which are always antithetical to economic development. This is so because the emphasis of the leaders and the led in such an environment is absolutely channeled to how to share the national cake with less or no thought of baking the same. By implication, political activities in the area are more of a ‘do or die affair,’ a situation where all the contestants adopt all the strategies they could muster to assume the political offices so as to have the power to allocate the national resources. By so doing, the economic development of the country is hampered. The study observed that the selected African countries are mired in underdevelopment decadence, which is ascribable to weak governance that was enhanced by natural resource endowment. However, the study suggested that the leaders of Sub-Saharan African countries should manage their natural resources prudently and diversify their economy for the purpose of sustainability to ensure economic development in the area.