Ghana’s Foreign Policy Choices in Relation to Wielding Oil and Gas Resource for Regional Integration

Abstract

Studies on Ghana’s fledgling oil economy have preponderantly focused on how to avoid the resource ‘curse.’ They are overly endogenous in outlook and substance. This paper acknowledges the fortitude of the internal concerns and prescriptions, but argues that addressing regional challenges and corollaries are equally critical to the viability of Ghana’s oil industry. The study makes the case that the rate of discovery of oil in West Africa and its exigencies such as the demarcating of exclusive maritime economic zones; transnational security threats; and ECOWAS protocols on free movement of persons, establishment, the environment, and human rights have conjoined the fate of the oil-producing states. It proposes a collective regional—policy-oriented—natural resource management approach through progressive foreign policy choices to prevent the identified challenges and threats from across the sub-region from bedevilling the oil sector.