This volume XII of the African Development Perspectives Yearbook on AFRICA - COMMODITY DEPENDENCE, RESOURCE CURSE AND EXPORT DIVERSIFICATION presents and analyses policy-oriented papers, development projections, and proposals of how to overcome African countries' dependence on a few primary commodities. In country cases and comprehensive analyses, African countries' state of commodity dependence, their efforts to diversify exports, and their vulnerability to crises, conflicts and disasters are discussed. These problems are considered in the context of the continent's abundance of natural resources, especially with regard to the strategic oil resources of the continent. Resource curse problems are discussed in various contributions, focussing on Cote d'Ivoire, Angola, Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Cameroon, and Nigeria. Full country cases for Nigeria and Cameroon highlight the export diversification issues by product and function. The implications for the required policy and institutional changes of overcoming the resource curse problems are analysed at the level of national, regional and sub-regional level. Book Reviews and Book Notes are included, and News and Information follow with up-to-date entries.§This volume builds the foundation for a comprehensive strategy of policy reforms in Africa of how to escape the primary commodities dilemma. Complementary to this volume XII is volume XI on AFRICA - ESCAPING THE PRIMARY COMMODITIES DILEMMA. Both volumes are of use for all who work in African countries as officials, executives, managers, researchers, and policy-makers, but also for all those in the world-wide donor community who actively support Africa's development concerns at the international, regional, country, local and project levels. Development practitioners, government officials, business executives, and development researchers as well as media people will experience this volume XII and also the complementary volume XI as indispensable sources of insight, reference and inspiration.
