Energy resources and future generations

Abstract

In 2001, President Fradique Menezes of the Democratic Republic of Sao Tome e Principe was in trouble. Sao Tome is an archipelago of roughly 1,000 square kilometers in the Gulf of Guinea. With a population of 160,000, it is West Africa’s smallest democracy, Africa’s second smallest country after the Seychelles, and the third smallest economy in the world. To put its size in perspective, the country is about five times the area of Washington, DC. During this time, President Menezes’ country was almost entirely dependent on foreign aid, notorious for somewhat humorous cases of petty corruption and, due to lack of money, government neglect and a highly undiversified economy. For instance, throughout the 1990s, foreign aid represented 97 percent of government revenue, making it the largest recipient of donor aid per capita in the world. Sao Tome also had the highest debt to GDP ratio of any country in the world. Sao Tome had to import everything – every light bulb, car battery, computer, sock, fork, plate, curtain, shoe, and so on – from vast distances, since neighboring countries also produced little and imported almost everything from Europe. The national economy was dependent on cocoa production as the main commercial crop which produced less than $4 million per year, and income from tourism was marginal. Due to its sheer lack of resources and high rates of debt, the Sao Tome economy featured numerous “creative” state-sponsored enterprises such as offering black market passports, licensing flags of convenience for international shipping companies, producing commemorative postal stamps featuring Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles, and even government-endorsed X-rated telephone calling centers.