I recently read a piece by Thomas Friedman, in the New York Times with this exact same title. His piece was about Taiwan, and countries like it, and how they avoided the resource curse, simply by not having enough resources to live on. That apparent lack, made them think. Pretty difficult not to think of Nigeria when reading such a piece. But before going on, let us try to define what the resource curse, or the Dutch disease, is.
In 1959, three years after Shell struck oil in Oloibiri, they sank another well in Slochteren, near Groningen in the Netherlands. This new gas-field, done in partnership with Exxon, was the biggest in Europe by some distance, and started production in 1963, producing around 100 billion cubic metres of gas per year in its first decade. Gradually the annual…
Read More…..Guardian Newspapers
