Special Issue Journal of Sustainability Science and Studies

Special Issue 2, December 2018

Article Number: 02

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Sustainability and Sectoral Stability in Africa’s Natural Resources Utilization

Khaleel, A.G., and Chakrabarti, M.

Pages 476-487

Abstract—Natural resources utilization not only in Africa but world over is being measured though World Bank’s sustainability measures like the Extended Genuine Savings II – EGS II, the El Serafy based Adjusted Net Savings – ANS method that are based on Hartwick, Hoteling rules and recently the El-Serafy methods of calculating resources rent. This, we argued, attributed to most studies in the area generally concluding that most developing resource rich nations are exhibiting slow growth over the years due to a number of different reasons. Inadequate understanding of these measures as well as how they weakly and unclearly relate the resource sector to the rest of the economy is argued to be amongst the reasons for the poor economic performance of these economies. The paper, in an attempt to contribute to a better understanding of the intricacies surrounding natural resource-growth relations, suggested extending the analysis of measuring natural resources utilization. This can be achieved by including additional measure of not only sustainability (substitutability) but also a measure of sectoral stability (measured using Dutch Disease Syndrome-DDS hypothesis and index). DDS index relates the sectors of the economy in such a way that brings out the sectoral interconnectedness of the resources-rich economies. This offer a more elaborate perspective of natural resources sustainability in connection to sectoral stability for enhanced policy making and institutional efficiency in resource-rich African countries.

Keywords—natural resources, Dutch disease, sustainability, sectoral stability