| Publication |
2009.
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| Summary/Abstract |
THE LARGEST SINGLE PRIVATE SECTOR INVESTMENT in sub-Saharan Africa, the Chad-Cameroon Petroleum Development and Pipeline Project, attracted worldwide attention not for the size of its oil reserves or the technical complexities of constructing a 1,070-kilometre pipeline from southern Chad to Cameroon's Atlantic coast, but for the elaborate World Bank-sponsored capacity-building initiatives designed to ameliorate the seemingly damaging 'resource curse' effects that oil production has had in other sub-Saharan African countries such as Angola, Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria, and Sudan.1 The project ran into trouble long before the oil started flowing in 2003 as construction activities rapidly outpaced the institutional capacity-building initiatives designed to ensure that Chad actually used its forthcoming oil revenues for poverty alleviation. Throughout 2005 and 2006, as it dealt with a myriad of domestic and international political crises, the government of Chad also engaged in a series of disputes with both the World Bank and members of the oil consortium (ExxonMobil, Petronas and Chevron) that culminated in the formal ending of the World Bank's role in this project in September 2008.
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