From the Article:
Traditionally, oil wealth comes into national treasuries via revenue-sharing schemes or royalties paid to governments. In theory, that wealth is then spread among citizens in the form of investment in public services, infrastructure improvements, or other forms of distribution.
It's a workable system in a stable, functioning democracy, but many oil-wealthy African countries lack the transparency and accountability that prevent state officials from mismanaging resource wealth or keeping it for their own personal use.
"Unfortunately, most countries having these discoveries have weak bureaucracies that don’t distribute money efficiently, and a lot gets lost on the way," says Todd Moss, vice president for programs at the Center for Global Development, a Washington-based think tank that promotes alternative distributions of resource revenues. "You put more money in the system and the corruption level just goes up," Mr. Moss says in a telephone interview.
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