Resource Nationalism in Africa: A Neo-Gramscian Analysis of Petroleum-Driven Industrialisation in Ghana

Abstract

The dissertation focused on three case studies in Ghana’s oil and gas sector, namely, national policy response and hegemony; local content policy; and community engagement, contestation and social justice. It shows that resource nationalism emanates from the imposition of global capitalist production limits, the neoliberal hegemony of institutions, the domestic political elite's choices and somewhat the desires and actions of civil society movements and their articulation of Ghana’s colonial past and the visions of early resource nationalism under Nkrumah’s resource sovereignty. Using interviews from key stakeholders in the industry, documentary analysis, policy analysis, and as well as reflections on key field observations during the study period, the dissertations’ findings chronicle the trajectory of oil’s emergence in Ghana and its subjugation to specific political projects and class interests. The dissertations’ key point of departure is that political elites, technocrats, and international capital created a power bloc which domesticates oil governance through discourses such as transparency, investment, and development. This power bloc functions as an integral state, mixing coercion and consent to reconcile international interests. Hence, resource nationalism appears not as a rupture with global capitalism but as passive revolution. The dissertation contributes to the furtherance of Neo-Gramscian theoretical concepts of hegemony, counter-hegemony, passive revolution, and the integral state in the context of resource governance in Africa. Empirically, it shows how the convergence of domestic elite interests and transnational capital determines the terms of Ghana’s oil economy. The dissertation, therefore, argues that the concept of resource nationalism in Ghana is not a unified project, but an unfinished hegemonic project, a site of continual contestation between the logic of domination and subaltern resistance, accommodation and autonomy, within a global energy order that continues to evolve.