Members

If you are already a member:

Otherwise, You can Register...

The Newspapers

We are in the process of preparing four newspapers for June 2015, one for each scenario. Read the newspapers to better understand the scenarios and if you feel moved to become a reporter for us, that would be great! You will need to Login/Register to be a Reporter Read the Newspapers

Article Topics

ireland energy, africa, agriculture, aviation, biodiesel, bioethanol, biofuel, business, cef, china, classified, comhar, commodities, communications, construction, cork, crime, demographics, economics, economy, education, electricity, energy, energy efficiency, environment, equestrian, eu, farming, finance, fishing, food, fuel cells, future, gas, governance, government, health, heating, housing, hydrogen, innovation, insurance, ireland, it, katrina, leisure, lifestyle, manufacturing, media, mining, oil, oil production, opportunities, peak oil, peakoil, pharmaceutical, planning, policy, politics, prices, radio, railway, religion, retail, review, risk, road, royalties, scenario planning, scenarios, sea, society, sustainable development, tax, technology, threats, tourism, train, transport, transport,ad, utilities, waste,

Most recent entries

Syndicate

RSS 2.0
Atom

What is RSS?

Join our Mailing List

Credits

Scenario: News
Newspaper for 1st June 2015

African governments reap windfall gains from high oil and commodity prices

If crude oil prices remain at current levels, surpluses generated by Africa’s eight largest oil exporters could be worth US$ 35 billion (£19 billion) by 2015, dwarfing the pledge by G8 leaders at Gleneagles to double aid. According to Michael Warner, a Research Fellow at the Overseas Development Institute, this projected windfall, coupled with near-record high prices for several other commodities, would be enough to fund the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

“While negotiations have been underway at the G8 and United Nations to double aid as a prerequisite for meeting the MDGs, the price of oil and many other commodities that Africa exports has doubled”, Warner said. “The per-tonne price of nickel, for example, has trebled in 3 years. The new aid targets will be dwarfed by the windfalls accruing to many of the very same countries targeted as falling behind in meeting the MDGs.” His study can be found at

http://www.odi.org.uk/pppg/activities/country_level/odpci/msp/ODI_ExtractiveBN6_MDGFinancingGap.pdf

He is of course assuming that the governing elites of the 21 sub-Saharan countries whose treasuries are getting greatly increased royalty payments from mining companies will actually spend the money for the benefit of the whole population. Other studies have shown that this is unlikely to be the case. For example, see Paul Collier’s work at

http://users.ox.ac.uk/~econpco/research/pdfs/Is-Aid-Oil.pdf

Posted by on 09/17 at 07:36 PM