TITLE:
Resource Rents and Dependence in Sub-Saharan African Countries Economies
AUTHORS:
Daniel Chibueze Onyejiuwa
KEYWORDS:
Resource Curse, Resource Dependence, Resource Rents, Exports, Economic Growth
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Access Library Journal,
Vol.3 No.4,
April
5,
2016
ABSTRACT: Generally, natural resources among sub-Sahara
African countries have been a subject of concern in Africa and across the
world. As a means of capital accumulation in developing countries, natural
resources have been considered as catalysts for economic growth. Almost all of
the sub Saharan countries are developing countries, and natural resources are
the main source of economic growth in these countries. This study assesses the
evidence of resource curse in sub-Saharan African countries and the study uses
secondary annual data. In order to realize the research purpose, resource
dependence measured by the share of total export to GDP and resource rents were
used, and identified its effect on real GDP.
The paper focuses on answering these three questions: whether resource
rents have retarded growth in SSA, which is the effect of dependence on natural
resources and can resource curse exist in sub-Saharan African countries despite
endowment in natural resources? The result showed
that merchandized exports at current values, coefficient value of 0.14 and
natural resource rents at current values,
coefficient value of 0.08, are positively significant with real GDP. However,
the lagged value of natural resource rents, coefficient value of ﹣0.06, is
negatively significant with real GDP. It was found that there is no evidence of
Dutch disease and rent seeking at current values, but it is evident at past
values. It implies that there is no evidence of resource curse at the current
period, however it was largely surfaced in the proceeding period. The
non-inclusion of other SSA countries that are not endowed with natural resources made the study limited to few
SSA countries. The study tends to
support the notion that resource-rich SSA countries are better off in short-run
than in long-run.