Billions at Play: The Future of African Energy and Doing Deals.

• Date: 01 January 2022
• Author: Powanga, Luka

Billions at Play: The Future of African Energy and Doing Deals, by N. J. Ayuk (Clink Street, 2020). 396 pages, ISBN: 9781641465595 (hardback). ISBN: 9781641465601 (paperback), ISBN: 9781641465618(ebook)

This broad-ranging book is a systematic and in-depth analysis of how oil and gas could catalyze Africa's economic prosperity and transition to clean energy. Africa is suffering from a resource curse, a term applied to countries with abundant natural resources such as minerals, oil, and gas, but with no economic growth to show for it. The lack of economic prosperity is due to resource revenue mismanagement and multi-national companies that exploit the resources, reaping enormous profits, often leaving behind environmental degradation. The little benefit from resource ownership often accrues to the few indigenous individuals in the country's top echelons. Africa, blessed with substantial natural resources, is the wealthiest continent in natural resources (World Atlas, 2021)). Yet it is also the poorest in income and energy use per capita. (e.g. African energy use per capita is less than half of the global average (International Energy Agency, 2018), income per capita is around a third that of Asia (Economic Times, 2020) and Africa has more than 590 million people without electricity (International...