Oil in the West African Transform Margin: Dangers and Possibilities

ABSTRACT

The West African Transform Margin (WATM) is the new centre of oil exploration in Africa. Less is known about its experiences and more work is needed to unearth them. Viewed through the eyes of Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, and Walter Rodney, the available evidence shows not only the persistence of grave limiting dangers about the colonial economic structure in this subregion but also major possibilities about inter- and intra-regional linkages. A strategy of alternative indigenous regional vision that de-emphasises economic growth and stresses autonomy, distribution, and energy sovereignty is shown to be workable, and superior to the status quo. How to make the transition will be challenging but the effort is worth making for by doing so the region will take control and direction of its resources, to plan, to develop, and to manage them, and hence to free itself from the debilitating shackles of the unjust economic order of the world system.

KEYWORDS:

• Oil
• West Africa
• linkages
• colonial structure
• sovereignty

Acknowledgements

Without implication, I thank the two anonymous reviewers of International Critical Thought.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Franklin Obeng-Odoom holds a PhD in Political Economy from the University of Sydney in Australia. His research centres on the political economy of cities, natural resources, and development. He is the substantive editor of the journal African Review of Economics and Finance and author of three books, including Governance for Pro-poor Urban Development: Lessons from Ghana (Routledge, 2013); and Oiling the Urban Economy: Land, Labour, Capital, and the State in Sekondi-Takoradi, Ghana (Routledge, 2014). Franklin is an elected fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences and the recipient of the 2015 Patrick J. Welch Award given by the Association for Social Economics for his contribution to its Forum for Social Economics.

Notes

¹ A preliminary verdict has been reached on key aspects of the case. Ghana has been granted the right to continue its operations in the disputed area but instructed to be cautious in its activities in order not to harm marine life. Also, Ghana has been temporarily stopped from initiating all new drilling processes and actions (ITLOS 2015).

² This is taken from the group's official website: http://we-africa.org/.

³ More information about this centre is here http://www.ecreee.org/.