The global scramble for Africa's estimated 25 billion barrels of oil is on. Those scrambling to secure (and/or exploit) the continent's abundance of fossil fuels include each oil-rich nation's political and economic Elites, international oil corporations, regional powers, trading blocs and the four major (and energy-hungry) economic players: the E.U., the U.S., Japan and China.

Oil-rich nations are bedeviled by the Resource Curse. An abundance of natural resource wealth distorts the national economy and politics in a number of ways: