Gold and the Genesis of Modern African Resource Nationalism: The Cases of Tanzania and Ghana

Of significance to the discussion of commodities on the African continent is the policy implemented by African states on the recommendation of the World Bank. This chapter considers the 1990s policies of investment liberalisation proposed by the World Bank that were implemented in many countries throughout the continent and are now at the heart of various disputes between investors and African governments. The World Bank’s policies created a very liberal and open environment for mineral exploration and development and were remarkably successful at stimulating a shift towards mineral exports. These policies were implemented in countries such as Ghana, Tanzania and Zambia and are at the very heart of the subsequent reaction termed ‘resource nationalism’ in many countries across the continent to what was seen as an unbalanced and inequitable sharing of economic benefits from mining. The chapter examines two particular cases of how the urge to rebalance the benefits of mining and resource extraction have been managed in gold-rich countries like Tanzania and Ghana. It also explains how an economic transformation occurred because of the exceptional good fortune of the IFIs and the mineral rich African countries. Had there been no price boom in the 2000s, the conclusions regarding IFI policies would almost certainly have been far less positive.