Natural resources and development: The gold sector in Mali

Resource-rich countries do not necessarily perform well, especially developing countries. A debate has developed since the 1990s about a “resource curse” hypothesis, which threaten to impede the resource-rich countries in taking advantage of their natural endowments. In Mali, a less-developed country, gold export has substantially increased since the 1990s. In this paper we show that widespread analyses, such as those of the Dutch disease and the quality of institutions, are not sufficient to understand what is at stake in Mali, and that the mining sector has proved to be neither a blessing nor a curse, at least until the present. Gold mining has brought budget revenues but induced few spillovers. As gold mining has now come to maturity, the die is probably cast.