Working Paper 84 - Ways of Using the African Oil Boom for Sustainable Development

The rapid growth in the oil-exporting countries in the Gulf of Guinea would allow these countries to finance large portions of their development budgets themselves. According to calculations by Warner (2005), the major oil countries of the region will reap a combined financing surplus, over and above their own Millennium Development Goal (MDG) investment needs and recurrent public expenditure, of US$22 billion in 2006, increasing to an annual US$35 billion by 2015. This amount is equivalent to about 50 percent of the calculated MDG financing gap. Yet, excluding the benefits to small powerful elites, resource booms on the African continent have generally not contributed to sustainable development.