Oil production, dispossession, and community development in Africa: A development education perspective

There is growing evidence that the impacts of oil and gas extraction on vulnerability are real and accelerating. Coupled with a host of interrelated livelihood sustainability questions, this has fueled interdisciplinary research on improving livelihoods to vulnerability, as well as to better understand the mechanisms of natural resources exploitation and policy options to limit the socio-cultural and environmental damages to natural resource extraction. Increasingly, development education, community education, and alternative livelihood sources are being leveraged by researchers when analyzing these problems. There is, however, limited discourse regarding the possible synergies that could result from improved engagement between those interested in natural resource extraction on one hand, and community members and researchers on the other hand in tackling resource extraction issues. In this chapter, we employ the accumulation by dispossession discourse espoused by David Harvey that focuses on the prospects for making new contributions to the growing literature on natural resource exploitation and vulnerability. We identify three critical issues that offer significant opportunities for collaborative studies on the nexus between natural resource extraction and development education: (1) the problem of oil exploitation and vulnerability, (2) questions of new alternative livelihood and transition, (3) development/community education and livelihood opportunities approach. Our analysis suggests that issues of development agenda/plan, decentralization of windfall revenues, sector analysis on policies and programs and other development education initiatives underpin these natural resource extraction research needs. This chapter is intended to foster new dialogue between oil exploitation and development education.