Will oil sink civil society in East Africa?
In recent years, East Africa has captured the spotlight of the African oil scene. Since Uganda struck oil in 2006, and Kenya followed up with its own discoveries six years later, observers have hyped up a race between the regional neighbours over which could produce oil first.
With the fall in international oil prices, dynamics are shifting for East Africa’s budding oil economics Uganda and Kenya. With prices down from $115 per barrel in June 2014 to around $63 a year later, industry progress in both countries has cooled, elongating the timeline to first oil. In this new price environment, rivalry is giving way to partnership.
Paralleling regional cooperation at the industry level, civil society groups are collaborating across borders in hopes of steering their governments away from the problems of corruption and underdevelopment oil wealth has wrought elsewhere.
DIIS senior researcher, Luke Patey, has written an article for the Financial Times’ publication, ‘This is Africa’, which explores the challenges, but also the new partnerships, East African civil society organizations are creating around oil.
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