Jul 15, 2026 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

(Kaieteur News) – Countries rich in natural resources have frequently suffered from poor governance, rent-seeking elites, and weakened public institutions. Yet there is a danger in reducing a complex economic phenomenon into a simple proposition that resource wealth inevitably becomes a curse when politicians become too powerful or when institutions fail to restrain leaders.

The evidence from economic history tells a more complicated story. The Resource Curse does not begin when institutions become weak. It begins when a country fails to build the economic, social, and institutional foundations necessary to transform natural wealth into broad-based human development.