A Political Settlements Analysis of Industrial Policy in Nigeria¿s Oil Refining Industry

Essay from the year 2019 in the subject Business economics - Economic Policy, grade: 63, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, course: Institutions and Governance, language: English, abstract: This essay emphasizes Khan¿s (2010) political settlements approach as a key explanatory paradigm for the variation in industrial policy results. The political settlements approach is applied to analyze industrial policy in the Nigerian oil refining sector. The multiplicity of horizontal elite and vertical redistributive interests has prevented the effective operation and revamp of the state-owned enterprises. It is until Dangote Industries Limited, backed by Africa's wealthiest man, has made substantial investments to build a 650,000 barell per day refinery that prospects have brightened. The construction seeks to bypass the fraught political settlement of the industry by building its own infrastructure and doing so in a way that circumvents the supply chain bottlenecks.