ABSTRACT
This introductory chapter highlights both the dilemma and nexus between natural resource sovereignty and the right to development in Africa and thus sets the conceptual framing and the context for the discussions in the rest of the book. While the dynamism in the demand for natural resources exerted by dominant market economies seems to look like a global phenomenon, Africa appears to bear the pressure a bit more disproportionately compared to other regions of the world. The chapter illustrates that despite international law provisions that protect states’ and peoples’ natural resource sovereignty rights, the race for Africa’s resources dating several centuries back remains unprecedented. It underscores the fact that Africa should, by virtue of its avalanche of natural resource endowments, stand out prominently as a development hub globally but has largely only remained a supply base in fuelling the pace of economic growth and technological advancement in more developed and industrialised parts of the world, unfortunately leaving its peoples only with a long-term aspiration to be achievedby 2063, if at all.
