Jack Mosbacher

Bio: Jack Mosbacher is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: Resource curse & Natural resource. The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 1 publications receiving 41 citations.

Petroleum to the people : Africa’s coming resource curse—and how to avoid it 1

Abstract: In October 2011, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a motion to seize a palatial cliff-top home in Malibu, California. The 16-acre property towers over its neighbors, with a palm-lined driveway leading to a plaster-and-tile mansion. Situated in the heart of one of the United States’ most expensive neighborhoods, the $30 million estate includes a swimming pool, a tennis court, and a four-hole golf course. In its complaint, the Justice Department also set its sights on high-performance speedboats worth $2 million, over two dozen cars (including a $2 million Maserati and eight Ferraris), and $3.2 million in Michael Jackson memorabilia—in total, assets equaling approximately $71 million. What made these extravagant possessions all the more remarkable was that they belonged to a government worker from a small African country who was making an official salary of about $80,000 a year: Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, the oldest son of and heir apparent to Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, the longtime president of Equatorial Guinea. Home to over one billion barrels of oil reserves, Equatorial Guinea has exported as many as 400,000 barrels of oil a day since 1995, a bonanza that has made the country wealthier, in terms of gdp per capita, than France, Japan, and the United Kingdom. Little of this wealth, however, has helped the vast majority of Equatorial Guinea’s 700,000 people: today, three out of every four Equatorial Guineans live on less than $2 a day, and infant mortality rates in the country have barely budged since

The Academy and the Successful Management of Ghana's Petroleum Resources

Abstract: This study advocates new roles, especially for public universities, to ensure socially productive uses of Ghana’s new petroleum resources. It stresses the urgent need for tertiary institutions to be engaged in this industry. Academics cannot sit on the fence or offer what-went-wrong analyses as they did in the past. This study advocates practical, smart public-policy solutions to challenges posed by oil, notably the absence of a well-articulated national vision or plan to train Ghanaians to promote substantial local content and prepare for legal, financial, health, environmental, and safety issues linked to petroleum production. The aim is to nudge academics to take some responsibility and initiative for appropriate petroleum policies, legislation, and practices that will work in and for Ghana to evade the proverbial resource curse, which afflicts most of Africa.

When government commitment meets community proactiveness: Governing gas and community engagement in Tanzania

Abstract: Following natural gas discoveries in offshore south-eastern Tanzania, the government has made several governance arrangements to prepare for the anticipated petro-economy. The emerging gas governance regime recognises, among others, the significance of engaging local communities in governance processes. This policy commitment is met with proactive communities which push for their engagement in decision-making and governance processes. This paper examines how government responds to community efforts for their engagement in decision-making processes in the gas sector. Particularly, the paper seeks to establish whether government's commitment to community engagement translates into a positive response to bottom-up participation efforts by gas communities. Drawing on interviews with community members, politicians and local and central government officials and critical analysis of gas policy framework, the paper shows that the government has consistently repressed community efforts for their engagement in gas governance. This negative response to community efforts calls for a deeper examination of extractive resource politics relative to the practice of community engagement.

The other resource curse: extractives as development panacea

Abstract: Since 2010, many African governments have challenged twenty years of extractive sector liberalization that has played a key role in unlocking mineral riches and attracting foreign direct investment. The potential for extractives to drive economic structural transformation is intuitively attractive, the Africa Mining Vision (2009) document providing a primary template. Geological inheritance alone, however, is not a panacea for economic development, industrialization or poverty alleviation. While much attention to the ‘resource curse’ has identified the problem of excessive rent-seeking and the consequent impact on elite consolidation, democracy, governance and macroeconomic distortions, a more fundamental problem, the ‘other resource curse’, may be an overlooked driver: a lingering assumption that mineral resources should straightforwardly provide significant revenue streams for public goods, inputs for industrial transformation, and extensive employment. Geology alone is neither conducive nor antithetica...