ABSTRACT
The aim of this article is to give an overview of the geological potential of Africa and to show the opportunities for additional tax revenue from the extractive sector that could contribute to further financing the sustainable development of SubSaharan Africa. We first provide an introduction to the actual economic importance of the extractive sector in Sub-Saharan Africa. We will then show the geological potential of Sub-Saharan
1 INTRODUCTION
In the past few decades, the extractive sector, notably mining as well as gas and oil extraction, has been regarded as an impediment to economic development by several authors. This includes the PrebischSinger hypothesis of falling terms of trade for commodity exporters (Prebisch 1950, Singer 1950) and the debate on the so called “resource curse” for a number of countries (Sachs & Warner 1995).
