Mineral resource governance and human development in Ghana / Управление минеральными ресурсами и развитие человеческого потенциала в Гане

The notion that mining can contribute positively to the economic and human development of mineral wealth countries makes a lot of sense, especially given the huge revenue mineral wealth developing countries can generate from the sector to alleviate poverty. A country has subsoil assets such as hydrocarbons and minerals, which it seeks to transform into surface assets  – human and physical capital  – that can be used to support employment and generate economic growth (Venables, 2016). However, in practice, this transformation has proven difficult to achieve. Indeed, few developing economies have been successful with this approach, and economic and social development have generally been lower in resource-rich developing countries than in those without resources. It was not until the 2000s (a period of rising commodity prices) that resource-rich countries grew faster, and even then per capita growth was similar in both groups of countries (International Monetary Fund, 2012).
The World Bank’s study of the economies of mining countries between 1990 and 1999 revealed that the per capita gross domestic product (GDP) growth was negative (World Bank, 2003). The term ‘resource curse’ was coined by Auty (1993) to capture the underperformance of resource-rich economies, drawing attention to the weak performance of countries such as Bolivia, Nigeria and Venezuela, among others. Africa is often said to be a paradox of plenty or suffering from a ‘resource curse’. This simply implies that Africa is mineral rich, but the poorest and most conflicted continent in the world. The continent has about ‘30% of the world’s mineral reserves, including 90% of the world’s platinum and 40% of its gold’ (Southall, 2009, cited in Carmody 2011, p. 15). <...>