Oil in Chad and Equatorial Guinea: Widening the focus of the resource curse

Abstract

The exploration and extraction of oil in the territorial sea of Equatorial Guinea and Chad’s southern region of Doba have led to certain socio-economic and political dynamics among their populations. The literature developed around the concept of ‘resource curse’ is helpful in understanding how oil stimulates the governments’ rentier behaviour and authoritarianism, as well as the countries’ poverty and inequality. However, not all the similarities between the cases are explained by these approaches and some of the differences are relevant to understand the specific configuration of the curse in these countries. Only by taking into account historical trajectories, the particular strategies of local and non-local actors, and the international political economy in which oil is extracted and commercialised, can we properly analyse all these dynamics in their complexity.