Contents lists available at ScienceDirect The Extractive Industries and Society journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/exis Original article Enterprise development? Local content, corporate social responsibility and disjunctive linkages in Ghana’s oil and gas industry Austin Dziwornu Ablo Department of Geography and Resource Development, Box LG 59, University of Ghana, Legon, Ghana ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Local content Corporate social responsibility Enterprise development Political settlement Oil and gas Ghana ABSTRACT The government of Ghana, in partnership with various Multinational Oil Companies (MNCs), implemented an enterprise development project for the oil and gas industry. The government framed the project within a context of Local Content Policy (LCP) while MNCs approached it as a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Both LCP and CSR initiatives have become essential strategies deployed by stakeholders to mitigate, among other things, the enclavity that characterises natural resource extraction across Africa. A disjunction between LCPs and CSRs undermines the success of projects deployed to enhance linkages in the extractive industries. This paper ex- amines the Enterprise Development Centre (EDC) project and argues that the divergence in conceptualisation and processes informed by LCP and CSR perspectives affected the content, strategies and impacts, and led to/contributed to the collapse of the EDC. There was a lack of understanding between stakeholders on in- terests and strategy, coupled with limited alliance-building based on value co-creation, which led to the failure of the EDC project. Better engagement between stakeholders is needed for such projects to engender value co- creation which is central to their successful implementation to promote positive development outcomes from the oil and gas industry. 1. Introduction Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is a growing oil and gas hub, gaining grounds as an essential player in the global energy matrix (Ackah- Baidoo, 2012; Carmody, 2016). A significant feature of African economies, however, is the mismatch between natural resource ex- traction and development. The extant literature (Auty, 1994; Humphreys et al., 2007; Karl, 2007; Sachs and Warner, 1995) places emphasis on weak governance regimes, corruption, volatility of the global commodities market, weak institutions and conflicts among the major causes of the resource curse – the negative relationship between natural resource extraction and development. Africa’s extractive industries tend to exist as enclaves disconnected from national economies (Ackah-Baidoo, 2012; Ferguson, 2005). Thus, little or no benefit trickles down to local and national economies from resources extraction (Ferguson, 2005). This disconnection between extractive industries and national economies underlies many of the resource-related conflicts that have plagued the Africa continent. In- deed, as Obi (2010) contends, the class relations and subordination of the African continent in a global political economy where minimal benefits accrue from resource extraction to African countries accounts for the resource curse. Oteng-Ababio (2018) in a study of Takoradi, Ghana’s oil city, found that indigenes expressed a feeling of disconnection from the oil and gas industry and contended that while the ‘the money is counted in Accra’ the oil is drilled near them. Whether perception or reality is that the extractive industries are de-linked, not only from national economies but also from local communities where resources are found and extracted. Various strategies have been initiated by governments to counter the prospect of the extractive industries producing limited positive development outcomes for societies. Fast gaining relevance are Local Content Policies (LCPs) that seek to promote the use of local personnel, goods and services in the extractive industries value chain beyond the direct contribution of resource extraction in the form of revenue re- ceived by governments (Ablo, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018; Klueh et al., 2007; Ovadia, 2016a, 2016b; Ramdoo, 2015; Tordo et al., 2013). Multinational Corporations (MNCs) also deploy Corporate Social Re- sponsibility (CSR) initiatives to gain the needed social license – the trust of communities to minimise the risk of any social uprising that might stem from the limited trickle-down of resource benefits to society. Es- sentially, LCPs and CSR initiatives have become essential strategies for addressing the potential enclavity of the extractive industries and re- ducing the risk of conflicts while fostering linkages between resource extraction and national economies. Since 2010, Ghana has been producing oil from its Jubilee Oil field. Between 2010 and 2018, several new oil and gas discoveries have been https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2019.09.003 Received 23 October 2018; Received in revised form 13 September 2019; Accepted 19 September 2019 E-mail address: aablo@ug.edu.gh. The Extractive Industries and Society xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx 2214-790X/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Please cite this article as: Austin Dziwornu Ablo, The Extractive Industries and Society, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2019.09.003