Very top of the article:

Becoming an OPEC member just recently, Angola is set to build one of the strongest economies in Africa, with its GDP growing over 30% annually, the highest rate in the world. Hopefully Oil will be just the trigger of a golden era in a country that possesses other important natural resources.

In my opinion, this growth rate is just plain reckless, and it is doubtful the Angolans, as history has exhibited in many other African countries, will spend that newfound oil money on sustainable economic policies. This new oil money will just fuel internal consumption for food exports and modern goods ect, and result in more and more modern lives that will be born dependent upon fossil fuels for their livelihoods. It is akin to yeast in a jar getting a boost in their growth medium, which will result in an intensification of the overshoot/die-off cycle. In my opinion we should be questioning growth as being something universally good for societies, and seeing it as something that will make us more dependent upon a system relying on increasing complexity and depleting fossil fuels to solve its problems. Increasing complexity, like the transition from horses to cars for transportations requires exponentially more infrastructure to implement and as will some green fantasy to ultra high tech hybrid cars which requires even more infrastructure. Few people seem to think of this background issue which is exponentially increasing dependencies on infrastructure to accomplish our the same simple task which requires exponentially more energy. The net energy cliff is on us in my opinion and a technological fix will further exacerbate our decent, a fundamental change in socialization is what we need similar to what Jeff Vail speaks of. That's why I don't see a 30% growth in GDP based on it's people making it a golden part of Africa, long term, but setting it up for a tremendous amount of difficulties.

Read Joseph Tainter's, The Collapse of Complex Societies, It explains this issue in greater detail

-Crews

Random Wiki tidbits:

The current government has announced an intention to hold elections in 2009. These elections would be the first since 1992 and would serve to elect both a new president and a new National Assembly.

The country is the second-largest petroleum and diamond producer in sub-Saharan Africa, yet its people are among the continent's poorest.

Many African states have developed this tendency post-colonialism:

The concept of a gatekeeper state was introduced by the African historian Frederick Cooper in his book Africa Since 1940: The Past of the Present.

According to Cooper, African governments suffer from a peculiar politico-economic dysfunction that derives from a particular historical sequence. Specifically, he contends "Africa was systematically conquered but not so systematically ruled" (2002: 196-197) and hence "colonial states had been gate-keeper states" (ibid.: 5) which had "trouble extending their power and their command of people’s respect... inward" (ibid.: 156) but could control "the interface of national and world economies" (ibid.: 141). The colonial powers wanted specific things from Africa (e.g. natural resources) and hence had only a limited transformational agenda since extraction could occur in the absence of a strong state. Ultimately, the authority of colonial regimes depended on the superior military forces of the metropole, which could easily defeat organised resistance but could neither routinise authority nor gain legitimacy (ibid.: 157). The survival of each colony therefore depended on external resources and support, not on internal factors like in established states. As a result, colonial governments had weak roots in the African countries nominally under their control and therefore could not really govern the social or cultural realms of their subjects. In turn, this external dependence produced an outward orientation focused on ‘guarding the gate’: colonies collected most of their revenues from taxes on imports and exports, controlled entry and exit visas, distributed foreign aid, decided who could move currency in or out, and issued licenses that determined who could engage in business activities (ibid.: 5, 97, 157).

The post-colonial "successor states," Cooper goes on to argue, inherited the mantle of gate-keeper from their former rulers. Independence, however, greatly exacerbated the negative consequences of gate-keeping because whereas before it was taken for granted who would control the gate (along with the power and wealth derived therefrom), in the post-colonial period there was no external military force to impose order. Furthermore, unlike the colonial powers (at least before the "development era" after about 1940) African rulers wanted to impose their authority internally in order to affect a far-reaching transformation of the economy and society. And given, moreover, that control of the gate was an "either/or phenomenon" (ibid.: 159) or a zero-sum game, the stakes of control were extremely high because the winners gained control of resources they could use to entrench their rule. Consequently fierce competition for control of the gate arose soon after independence, and this resulted in the collectively irrational political instablitity that occurred in Africa after independence as evidenced by, among other things, cycles of coups and counter coups.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatekeeper_state

Hate to be critical, but the future-prospects part at the end was wanting. I would suggest for TOD to get someone versed in political-economy to maybe contribute a little bit to relevant articles. I could be available (if wanted) maybe the mods could help facilitate the connection with the relevant parties. (provide them with my email, if its not on display--IDK).

See also the "resource curse" thesis. In a nutshell: Resource rich countries exhibit a startling trend toward economic underdevelopment. Countries whose economies are largely dependant on the extraction and production of primary resources suffer from domestic strife and conflict, poverty, authoritarian rule, and flaccid economic growth. Resource dependence leads to the "rentier state," in which those in power come to depend on rents from resource extraction rather than taxation, making them less accountable to their people.

Ross, Michael. "The Natural Resource Curse: How Wealth Can Make You Poor." Natural Resources and Violent Conflict: Options and Actions. Ed. Ian Bannon and Paul Collier. Washington D.C.: The World Bank, 2003. 17-42.

Collier, Paul. "Natural Resources, Development and Conflict: Channels of Causation and Policy Interventions." Oxford University and the World Bank (2003).

Sachs, Jeffrey D., and Andrew M. Warner. "Natural Resource Abundance and Economic Growth." Center for International Development and Harvard Institute for International Development (1997).