The project was carried out with the financial support of the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education (No. N114 443837). The main objective of the project was to examine and fully understand the natural resources’ impact on development and institutional quality of African states. The hypothesis assumes that countries abundant with natural resources experience relatively slower economic growth and their intuitions face a number of potentially adverse effects.

The participants of this interdisciplinary project put under scrutiny a question about the actual role of copper and diamonds in the development and institutional quality of Botswana and Zambia. They also designed and tested a coherent analytical approach that might be useful in better understanding of a “selectivity” problem of the curse with respect to other African countries.

The project was supervised by Professor Elżbieta Stadtmüller from the Institute of International Studies, University of Wroclaw.

The project’s findings were published as a book manuscript.