School of Social and Political Science

Background

Nelson Oppong is a Senior Lecturer at the Centre of African Studies, University of Edinburgh. His work combines rigorous academic research with practical policy engagement and knowledge-based collaborative initiatives, focusing on the political economy of natural resources, institutional reform, state-building, energy governance, and global development across Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific.

He currently leads two funded projects, which examine national responses to the UN Energy Compacts and climate-driven urban transformations in Africa, supported by the Carnegie Trust and the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Nelson sits on the editorial boards of the Review of African Political Economy and Critical African Studies and serves on the International Advisory Board for Intersecting Energy Cultures – based at the Penn Program in Environmental Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania. He served as Guest Editor for Extractive Industries and Society, curating a widely cited special issue on oil and gas governance in Africa. His research appears in leading journals, including Globalizations, Oxford Development Studies, and Current History. 

As a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, Nelson mentors emerging scholars and practitioners through the Edinburgh Principal’s Africa Partnership Fund, where he serves as Academic Lead, and through the African Peacebuilding and Developmental Dynamics Fellowship of the Social Science Research Council. He is also a Senior Research Associate in the Department of Sociology at Rhodes University, South Africa.

Before joining Edinburgh, Nelson held teaching appointments at the University of Oxford, University of Bath, and City University of New York, delivering courses in international development, politics, world history, and human geography. He has also worked as a development and policy consultant for the World Bank, the Commonwealth Secretariat, and public institutions across Europe, North America, West Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific.

Nelson holds a Ph.D. and M.Phil. in International Development from the University of Oxford, an M.Phil. in Political Science, and a BA (Hons.) in Political Science, French, and Philosophy from the University of Ghana.

Selected publications

Refereed Journal Articles

• Oppong, N. (2023). Aiding stakeholder capitalism: donors and the contentious landscape of transparency reform in Ghana. Canadian Journal of Development Studies/Revue canadienne d'études du développement, 1-20.
• Oppong, N. (2023). Mining and the Quagmire of Job Creation in Africa. Current History, 122(844), 178-184.
• Andrews, N., & Oppong, N. (2023). How global norms matter: norm diffusion and the tangled web of localization in Ghana’s extractive industry. Globalizations, 20(3), 482-498.
• Oppong, N., Patey, L., & de Oliveira, R. S. (2020). Governing African oil and gas: Boom-era political and institutional innovation. The Extractive Industries and Society, 7(4), 1163-1170.
• Oppong, N. (2020). Does political settlements analysis capture the unsettling politics of oil in Africa? Review of African Political Economy, 47(166), 676-686.
• Oppong, N. (2020). Between elite reflexes and deliberative impulses: oil and the landscape of contentious politics in Ghana. Oxford Development Studies, 48(4), 329-344.
• Oppong, N. and Andrews, N. (2020). Extractive industries transparency initiative and the politics of institutional innovation in Ghana's oil industry. The Extractive Industries and Society. 7(4), 1238-1245.
• Oppong, N. (2018). Negotiating transparency: NGOs and contentious politics of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative in Ghana. Contemporary Social Science<, 13(1), 58-71.
• Oppong, N. (2016). Ghana's Public Interest and Accountability Committee: an elusive quest for ‘home-grown’transformation in the oil industry. Journal of Energy & Natural Resources Law, 34(3), 313-336.
• Oppong, N. (2016). The twists and turns of institutional innovation in small island developing states: the case of Tuvalu. Commonwealth & Comparative Politics, 54(1), 23-45.
• Oppong, N. (2013). Promoting Governance, Strengthening Capacity A Public Sector for Wealth & Job Creation. Partnership for Research in International Affairs & Development Policy Journal, 1(2), 1-25.

Refereed Book Chapters

• Oppong, N., & Dombroski, K. (2024). Majority and minority worlds. In Introducing human geographies (pp. 115-128). Routledge.
• Oppong, N. and Acheampong, K.O (2022).“Africa: Oil, Colonialism, and Development.” in Roland Dannreuther and Wojciech Ostrowski (eds.) Handbook on Oil and International Relations. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd, pp. 179-190 (2022)
• Oppong, N. (2018)“Negotiating Transparency: NGOs and the Contentious Politics of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative in Ghana.” in Hantrais, L., Kattumuri, R and Lenihan, A. T. (eds.) Sustaining Natural Resources in a Changing Environment. London: Routledge (2018) Ch.5
• Oppong, N. (2018) ‘Case Study: Ghana’s Public Services Commission’ in Nwasike, J. and Maina, D. (eds.) Key Principles of Public Sector Reforms: Commonwealth Case Studies. London: Commonwealth Secretariat pp. 116-135

Refereed Book Reviews

• Oppong, N. (2019) Book Review: The petro-developmental state in Africa: Making oil work in Angola, Nigeria and the Gulf of Guinea. by J. S. Ovadia. London, Hurst & Co. Commonwealth and Comparative Politics. 57(3),393-4
• Oppong, N. (2017) Dirty Gold: How Activism Transformed the Jewelry Industry. MIT Press, 2017. [book review] The Extractive Industries and Society. Available online 15 December 2017
• Oppong, N. (2015). Franklin Obeng-Odoom. Oiling the urban economy: Land, labor, capital, and the state in Sekondi-Takoradi, Ghana [book review]. African Spectrum, 2/2015: 143–145