oa Governance Of Natural Resources, Security And Investment In Africa: A Qatari Perspective

This research project has three general objectives which are: (1) To evaluate Qatar's potential for economic diversification; (2) To analyze how soft power influence can be used to promote economic diversification; (3) To inform diagnostic options for Qatari investment authorities to build up capacities of stakeholders in extractive industry-rich economies. These three objectives include analyzing domestic institutions in Qatar as well as those in and around the extractive industries in Africa. Country studies are ongoing for more than a dozen states in Africa in an attempt to identify potential economic linkages between Qatar and Africa. Cross-cutting elements of this project is the evaluation of governance mechanisms for the purpose of promoting 'good' governance in the extractive industries along the lines of those promoted by the African Mining Vision (AMV) and the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative. This paper explores the political economy of Qatar though an analysis of the state's system of governance and the governance of the national extractive industry to better understand this variety of governance and whether it is suitable to be considered 'good' governance. There must be an understanding of the baseline reality in the context being studied so that progress or the lack there of may be measured going forward. The second objective of this paper is to analyze the foreign policy strategy across major events within the past decade that has garnered the state the positive descriptions of 'maverick' and 'resilient' as well as prompting the negative consequences. We also highlight the connection between governance and security to evaluate the means by which Qatar secures its state and its citizens. There are two frames of reference from which we will analyze Qatar in this case study, that of good governance and security, state and human security.