> Doesn't it? I suspect almost every country (in Africa especially) has a wealth of some resource, they just don't know it's there and don't have the technology to mine it. Perhaps the smart educated folks may discover it occasionally.
The problem is quality government. I live in Norway which is big on resources too and work with people who are geologists and do surveying. Norway is insanely expensive to do mining compared to Africa in terms of labor costs, environmental protection laws etc.
However many mining companies would still pick Norway over Africa. Why? Very stable high quality government. Mining requires large investments for years. You don't want to lose those investments because of civil war, or some dictator takes power, or a populists nationalize mine without compensation.
And even if an African country gets a mine, they run the risk of it not helping the country develop much. Because:
1) A western company may extract most of the wealth. In principle that could happen in Norway too, but Norwegian government will tax these companies far more. A western company can often squeeze poor African governments to get very low tax deals. Or they simply bribe officials.
2) Government corruption. There may be a lot of wealth, but it may end up in the pockets of corrupt officials who use it to buy foreign luxury products hence it benefits the local economy very little.
My point is that developing a country is a very complex task, because they tend to have a whole cocktail of problems that reinforce each other.
Often many approaches to solving these problems make matters worse. Zero tolerance towards corruption e.g. tends to make things worse. That allows corruption charges to be used selectively to imprison political opponents.