Oil has recently been discovered in Madagascar, one of the poorest countries in the world. Exploitation is about to start. Oil is often considered as “black gold”, illustrating the hope for higher welfare in the country. However, experience has shown that this is not always the case. More often than not the opposite happens. Rather than giving extended possibilities to the population to realize their capabilities, inequality increases and the poor population remains poor despite of the boost in the national economy.
There are many interesting questions to examine deeper. I believe the most important one is how the local population, meaning men, women and children in the whole country can benefit from oil. In my master thesis, I will look at experiences from other countries which have been in the same situation and try to gather “lessons learned” and how these can be adopted to the Malagasy context.