Democratic Institutions, Natural Resource Governance, and Ghana’s Oil Wealth

The literature on natural resources is endowed with works on countries that have experienced slow economic performance despite their abundant natural resources (resource curse), with the exception of Norway and other few countries. Strong institutions and good governance practices have been underscored as some of the explanatory factors to the high performance of the outlier countries. Ghana’s oil discovery in the era of its advancing democratic practices has led some to argue that the country might escape the resource curse phenomenon. While recognizing the importance of this argument, this article, however, argues that Ghana’s likelihood of escaping the resource curse could be problematic due to its exclusive emphasis on democratic governance without greater focus on oil sector governance. Drawing on the theory of agenda setting and the existing literature, the article makes the case for agenda shift in the debate on Ghana’s oil wealth and development. It stresses the need for a dualistic governance (the democratic and the oil sector) approach in the broader discourse on how Ghana can escape the resource curse.