Oil, sovereignty and self-determination: Equatorial Guinea and Western Sahara

Abstract

This article analyses the role of the sovereignty principle for the oil industry and the implication this relationship has for development in Africa. It also looks at the transnational social movements around the exploitation of natural resources, comparing Equatorial Guinea and Western Sahara. The main hypothesis is that international norms of self-determination and those developed for non-autonomous people in Western Sahara, allow us to raise questions and to make demands over mineral resources in a very different way than where sovereignty is not in question, as in Equatorial Guinea.