As the more volatile and mineral-rich countries of Africa look like settling down, peace and expanding workforces could lead to greater prosperity and more manpower and brainpower to detect and extract our resources.

Africa may be quietly becoming the next oil-Mecca as more explorations are carried out; this, at least, is what some of the giant Asian economies feel as they turn their attention in our direction. Africa, both on-shore and off-shore, is the new and last great frontier. In his book Africa: Crude Continent, written in 2008, and reissued in paperback with an epilogue written in February this year, southern-African born and bred economist, Duncan Clarke, gives a country-by-country overview of the struggle for the continent's oil; a struggle that has been intensifying in the last few years, yet which, at the time of independence, in the early 1960s was hardly an issue.

The "oil question," he says, has to be seen in its wider context: historical and socio-economic. Otherwise, it becomes victim to the cliché that oil is a "curse": end of argument. Or that economic inequalities are all due to oil, yet they are embedded and exist in non-oil states too.

Much of Africa's flora and fauna - including the islands - are unique. The diversity of landscapes, its climates and the little known and understood reality that much of the continent still lives by subsistence, based on lineage and the extended family, are factors not to be excluded in the study of the impact of the petro-industry on developing African societies and economies.

Ancient and modern exist side by side. Old traditions have not disappeared. In many places relationships remain semi-feudal. Millions living in the shanty-towns and rural remote areas have little connection with the capitalist formal economic power and national authority, and their daily reality is hardly recorded by official statistics.

All the same, the Western countries in particular would like to "fix" Africa and sort out our problems, often without taking into account that at its core Africa has changed very little in the past century, except that it was opened up, controlled and now managed, at arm's length, by rival outside powers allied to local power-brokers. Poorly appreciated too by outsiders, but essential to be understood if one is to work here, is the power and omni-presence of patronage and loyalties, looking after friends, social allies, and the obligations to "one's own".

In short, one can only get along here if one has some basic understanding of and empathy with local conditions, which are different to anywhere else, especially those countries where the oil-explorers come from.

The sheer wealth, he argues, of Africa's proven oil and gas reserves (in excess of 250 billion barrels-of-oil equivalent) with more to be found, is "far from any curse". The sector has opened up many far-flung areas that would otherwise have contributed little to economic growth and development. Africa's challenge, he concludes, is to unlock its potential. Clarke's wide scope counters the usual pessimism on oil discovery in Africa.

This book is not available in local bookshops yet, but the 2010 edition can be bought online for 15 pounds sterling.