The real resource curse is premature certainty

 

 Africa’s resource curse is usually blamed on volatility. Commodity prices swing. Demand rises and falls. Markets are unpredictable. Governments, we are told, struggle to plan in the face of uncertainty.

This diagnosis is comforting. It is also wrong.

Africa’s deeper problem is not uncertainty, but certainty arriving too early—long before societies have learned enough, debated enough, or chosen deliberately enough. What undermines development is not volatility, but the premature closure of options.

This is the real resource curse.

 

When uncertainty disappears too fast

In today’s global economy, uncertainty is treated as a problem to be eliminated as quickly as possible. Investors want clarity. Financiers want predictability. Policymakers are told to “de-risk” projects.

For African resource economies, this de-risking often happens at the very start—through long-term contracts, fixed standards, financing conditions and infrastructure commitments that lock in a particular future.

Once these are in place, uncertainty may be reduced. But so is choice.

 

Contracts don’t just manage risk — they decide the future

Take extractive industries. Long-term offtake agreements, stabilisation clauses and take-or-pay contracts are presented as technical tools to attract investment. In reality, they do far more.

They determine what will be extracted, where it will be processed, how fast it must move to market and who captures the value. They also make alternative futures—local processing, slower extraction, experimentation—appear infeasible or “unbankable”.

By the time governments introduce industrial policy, the future has already been written into legal and financial commitments.

 

Standards as silent governors

The same is true of standards.

Environmental, technical and trade standards are essential. But when they are defined externally and adopted wholesale, they become powerful instruments of closure. They decide which technologies count, which forms of production qualify, and which timelines are acceptable.

Once standards are fixed, deviation is costly. Learning is discouraged. Innovation narrows.

Certainty, in this sense, is not neutral. It reflects power.

 

Why Africa keeps missing the “right moment”

This dynamic helps explain a persistent puzzle. African governments repeatedly announce beneficiation, industrialisation and value-addition strategies. Yet outcomes rarely change.

The usual explanation blames weak implementation. The real problem is timing.

Industrial policy arrives after certainty has been imposed—after contracts are signed, infrastructure built and markets pre-committed. Reform then appears disruptive, risky or unrealistic, not because it is wrong, but because options have already been frozen.

The future is closed upstream. Politics comes too late.

 

Volatility is not the enemy

Ironically, uncertainty can be a resource.

Volatility keeps options open. It allows learning, adjustment and renegotiation. It creates space for debate about sequencing and strategy.

What kills development is not uncertainty, but the rush to eliminate it—especially when that rush serves external interests better than domestic ones.

Africa’s challenge is not to escape volatility at all costs, but to avoid premature certainty.

 

Anticipatory capture in practice

This early closure of futures I call  anticipatory capture: a process through which expectations about the future become binding before outcomes materialise.

It happens through contracts that pre-commit output, standards that narrow technological choices and financing arrangements that privilege speed over sequencing. Once capture occurs, even well-intentioned reformers find their room for manoeuvre sharply constrained.

Extraction continues not because alternatives are impossible, but because they were ruled out early.

 

A different development instinct

If Africa wants to break the cycle, it must cultivate a different instinct.

Not every uncertainty needs to be resolved immediately. Not every investment needs a 20-year guarantee. Not every standard needs to be imported wholesale. Strategic delay can preserve value.

This requires political courage: the willingness to say “not yet”, to tolerate ambiguity, and to resist pressure for premature closure.

Rethinking the resource curse

The resource curse is not an unavoidable fate tied to geology. It is produced by timing—by who gets to decide when the future becomes fixed.

As long as certainty arrives too early, Africa will continue to implement futures chosen elsewhere.

The real task is not to tame volatility, but to govern uncertainty—to decide when clarity is earned, and on whose terms.

Only then can resources become a foundation for development rather than a trap.