You can get a taste in this article that presents some of the arguments from the book, but you really gotta read the first third of Africa's New Oil to really get it- the devil is in the details, and Hicks takes the time to lay the devil out. Anyone interested in Chad should start here.

This is also the best explainer about contemporary Chad and the teetering but immense stranglehold on power that is the Deby regime, fueled and funded by his brilliant, creative manipulation of World Bank / China oil deals. Hicks gives us well-researched facts and political economy instead of the typical tropes and cultural assumptions that tend to characterize writing about the Sahel. 17 Celeste Hicks, Africas New Oil, (Zed Books: London, 2015). It's hard for a book like this to get traction because it is wonky and at times so deep in weeds of contractual clauses that it gets pretty boring, but it is also an eye-opening insight into otherwise inexplicable why's of a region about which it's hard to learn. Conservancies, conflict and dispossession: exploring the impact of oil exploration on. 19.63, new condition, Sold by Paperbackshop rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Glendale Heights, IL, UNITED STATES, published 2015 by Bloomsbury Publishing (UK). International ignorance (or intentional avoidance) of these underlying structures contributes to the stupid policy interventions that are fueling conflict and displacement in the region, propping up dictators and undermining social movements. Add to Cart Add this copy of Africas New Oil Power, Pipelines and Future Fortunes to cart. Hicks follows the money as far as she can go, demonstrating that understanding both the power plays by and clever regulation of neocolonial extractive industries is necessary foundation for understanding any of the contemporary politics, conflict, migration, shifting living conditions, and terror in the Sahel today. Dense but absolutely essential muckrake into the environmental, tax, and economic incentives of oil extraction deals in case studies of Chad, Niger, and Ghana.

Africa's New Oil by Celeste Hicks