Joshua Gogo
Joshua Gogo, PhD, CMC, ICD.D, CFA, is an economist, political risk analyst, and institutional reform specialist whose work focuses on the intersection of economics, public policy, public choice, and politics, with a special interest in natural wealth, political legitimacy, institution design and structural justice.
He holds a PhD in Economics, is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA®), and an Institute-certified board director (ICD.D). Before entering academia and policy, Dr. Gogo began his career as an oil field engineer, working across multiple continents. These early experiences gave him direct exposure to the contrasting realities of oil-producing communities around the world—insights that would later shape his academic and professional trajectory.
Drawing on both fieldwork and economic theory, he developed the MASI framework, a structural diagnostic model that measures Mobility, Access to Voice, Spatial Burden, and the Welfare Gap to assess the risk of instability and exclusion in resource-endowed regions.
Over the past two decades, Dr. Gogo has advised governments, oil and gas companies, investment firms, multilateral agencies, and civil society actors on issues related to extractive sector governance, fiscal federalism, and institutional legitimacy. His work, writing and public speaking continue to challenge conventional narratives and advocate for a more just and participatory model of development and structure design.
Story Behind the Book
This book began with a contradiction—one I encountered not in a textbook, but in the oil fields of the world.
As a young oil field engineer, I worked across continents, from the shifting deserts of Algeria to the forested swamps of the Niger Delta, and the frozen plains of Alberta. Everywhere I went, I encountered a familiar story: natural wealth in the ground, yet poverty and disillusionment above it. Infrastructure often ended where pipelines began. Prosperity flowed outward, while pollution, protest, and political neglect settled in.
It was in these places—on rigs, in riverine villages, and through conversations with militants, community elders, operators, civic society activists, and government officials—that I first began to ask: why does the presence of resource wealth so often coincide with political instability, exclusion, and social fragmentation? And more importantly, what structures allow these patterns to persist across countries and contexts?
Resource, Region, and Ruin is the result of that journey. It began formally as a doctoral dissertation in economics, but was shaped equally by field research, public policy work, and lived observation. My focus has since become the intersection of economics, public policy, public choice, and political legitimacy, particularly in the Global South where structural justice remains elusive for many resource-bearing communities.
Over time, I developed a framework—MASI—to better understand and diagnose the structural conditions that underpin both grievance and governance failure. MASI stands for Mobility, Access to Voice, Spatial Burden, and the Welfare Gap—four variables that help explain why some regions erupt in conflict while others remain silently burdened.
The field research for this book took me into the heart of these dynamics: from Sudan to Uganda, Alberta, Canada to Venezuela, and into some of the most remote and contested spaces in Nigeria’s Niger Delta, where I worked directly with regional development agencies, oil operators and frontline communities to develop and test the MASI framework in lived context. With the support of civil society leaders like Egondu Esinwoke, Livingstone Membere, Belema Papamie, and Miabiye Kuromiema, I was also able to speak directly with former militants, community youth, and oil operators navigating the shadow economy of illicit oil. Those encounters revealed a world where mobility is constrained by culture, environment, and fear, and where voice exists without consequence.
This book is written for multiple audiences: for scholars, it offers a new analytical lens grounded in lived context; for policymakers and reformers, it offers a diagnostic tool for building institutions that are inclusive, not extractive; for citizens and communities, it affirms that their struggles are not the result of failure or fate—but of design.
Resource, Region, and Ruin is not just about resource economies—it is about the politics of belonging, the geometry of exclusion, and the possibility of justice. It invites us to rethink how wealth is defined, how legitimacy is earned, and how development must be reimagined from the margins inward.
Joshua Gogo, PhD, CMC, ICD.D, CFA