As Ghana prepares to pump oil in the second half of 2010, hopes are rising, both among hard-pressed market traders at home and in the far-flung Diaspora, where Ghanaians are quitting jobs in American banks to head back to an optimistic homeland.
Oil was found off Ghana’s coast in 2007 and, even without further discoveries, is now expected to earn an average of $1.2 billion in annual state revenues for almost two decades.
For a country with 23m people and a GDP of $16 billion, it could be a big boost – or a crippling blight.
Perky economic growth, a decent human-rights record, and changes of government by the ballot box in 2000 and 2008 have made Ghana one of the past decade’s success stories in Africa. Read the rest of this entry »
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