The New Approach to Resource Governance in Africa: Adopting a Prosocial Resource Governance Framework in Ghana

Abstract

"Africa’s vast resource deposits are a sign of wealth in the continent. However, the translation of this wealth to human and economic development appears to be a wild goose chase, the major reason being poor governance. African countries have been introduced to a number of governance initiatives but the desirable results are yet to be achieved. The continent continues to lose huge sums of money through corruption as poverty deepens and sustainable development remains a mirage. One question remains unanswered: why is Africa not winning the fight against corruption? This paper identifies that one gap in resource governance in Africa lies in the non-integration of human behavior into its governance setting. This is to say that human behavior plays a role in resource governance and must be given the necessary attention. This paper attempts to address the gap by proposing a framework of eight principles designed to shift the behavior of resource managers from selfish tendencies to becoming prosocial. The eight principles evolves from the descriptive analysis of the principles of self-organization and self-governance and other principles that have worked in other jurisdictions. The objective of the paper is to create an awareness of the identified gap in Ghana to arouse the government’s buy-in of the proposed prosocial resource governance framework. The flexible nature of the framework makes it adaptable to other African countries and not restricted to Ghana. The adoption of a prosocial behavior will enable resource managers to collectively generate homegrown solutions to deal with corruption and improve resource governance."