ABSTRACT
Since the commodity price boom that started a decade ago, an increasing number of poor countries have become resource-rich – or rather mineral-dependent – in that more than a quarter of their exports of goods consist of fossil fuels and minerals. By 2010, 61 low-and middle-income countries were mineral-dependent, many of these being in sub-Saharan Africa. This is a onethird increase in just 14 years (Haglund, 2011: 3). Resource dependence tends to be associated with weak governance indicators. Hence, natural resource management (NRM) in general, and the governance of extractive resources in particular, has become a critical issue in many weak states undergoing complex peacebuilding and/or statebuilding processes.
