Let us be clear from the outset. The collapse of the Equatorial Guinean government is not a surprise. It is the logical conclusion of a regime that confused oil wealth with genius, and mistook a petro-dollar bubble for sustainable economic policy.
The parallels with the late Roman Republic are instructive: when elites believe they are entitled to prosperity without the labour of governance, the barbarians are already at the gate. In this case, the barbarians are not foreign invaders but the consequences of chronic mismanagement, corruption, and a failure to diversify beyond hydrocarbons. President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, the world’s longest-serving head of state, has presided over a system that enriched a small clique while the majority of the population languished.
The International Monetary Fund’s patience has run out. The targets were missed. The illusion is shattered.
The government has fallen. What follows? A power vacuum, likely filled by military factions or a ‘transition’ that preserves the same extractive elites.
The tragedy is that none of this is new. We have seen it in Nigeria, in Venezuela, in Angola. The resource curse is not a myth; it is a historical law.
Equatorial Guinea is its latest victim. The West will wring its hands and speak of ‘democratic transition’, but the real lesson is simpler: a nation that does not produce, that does not build institutions of genuine accountability, that lives on the largesse of finite geological luck, will eventually face the day of reckoning. That day has arrived.
The sooner we stop romanticising ‘resource nationalism’ and start insisting on industrial discipline, the better. Until then, we will watch these farcical tragedies repeat themselves, each time with the same chorus of surprise from those who refuse to learn from history.
