A few months ago I heard a US radio programme – The Connection – about the newly-constructed Chad to Cameroon pipeline.
Terry Lynn Karl explained in her book The Paradox of Plenty (and on the radio show) how oil revenues have actually made the plight of the poor worse in several countries around the world.
This month, as you might expect, a Washington Post reporter found “prostitutes are some of the only locals doing well”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54448-2004Mar12.html from the $100m a year that will come to Chad’s government because of the pipeline.
Note: the “Internet Centre for Corruption Research”:http://wwwuser.gwdg.de/~uwvw/ found Cameroon among the countries with the “highest levels of perceived corruption”:http://wwwuser.gwdg.de/~uwvw/corruption.cpi_2003_data.html in 2003.
