AFRICA is home to a tenth of the planet’s oil, a third of its mineral reserves and produces two-thirds of its diamonds. High prices may pep up the continent’s short-term economic growth, but scholars have long suspected that its plentiful natural resources also breed instability and violence. Politicians and their cronies cannot resist skimming off some of the huge profits, the theory goes, which enrages those who are left out. Struggles over these wealths have played a part in many African troubles, from militias in the Democratic Republic of Congo to Sudanese civil wars. However, identifying a systematic link between natural resources and violence in Africa has proven tricky for economists, who must usually work with small or insufficiently detailed datasets.
A new paper from four academics at Swiss universities tries to get around the problems faced by previous studies.* For each year from 1997 to 2010, the authors gathered detailed data on the location of hundreds of mines and thousands of conflict events (including riots and...Continue reading
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