London: Suspicion and disapproval have long attended the pursuit of profit in post-conflict societies. The economic incentives surrounding natural resources, in particular, are often seen as prolonging wars, obstructing peacemaking and holding back social progress. Yet now, driven principally by the growing desire of post-conflict governments to complement aid with trade and the increasing availability of long-term investment, a new path to development and peace is opening up.

Making natural-resource endowments work effectively for development requires, as a first condition, an investment climate characterised by transparency and accountability. However, as a number of states in West Africa and elsewhere have discovered, this is not enough. Without large-scale, long-term commitments - what we have termed "macro-finance" - there will be little tangible benefit from improving governance within a timeframe that is politically relevant. This is where a wave of state-backed investment in natural resources presents new options for leaders in the developing world.

The principal western charge against such investments, particularly those from China - that they are pursued as a matter of commercial, as opposed to charitable, interest - is both accurate and entirely unobjectionable to many African governments. Indeed, the caricature of Asian investors in Africa rests on one significant misperception, as well as a broader underlying myth.

The misperception concerns the nature of the still-developing and complex relationship between African countries and Asian investors. The relatively new experience of being engaged as commercial and trade partners; the marginal nature of local private-sector activity; the scale of (re)construction investment necessary; and the structural and cyclical gaps in donor funding are leading countries emerging from conflict, and developing countries generally, to look favourably on Asian investors willing to pay for natural resources through a mix of financial payments and infrastructure investments.

The myth is of an idyllic past - a half-century when western investors and states acted as open, transparent, non-exploitative partners for African countries after their independence from colonial rule. This myth, unsurprisingly, has little purchase among African governments themselves.

The reality is that the principal private-sector opportunities in many post-conflict societies are associated with natural resources and require long-term investment, a high tolerance of political and financial risk, and the ability to mitigate that risk through state-backed preferential financing and political support. For those able to attract it, macro-finance is compelling as a matter of economics, politics and national dignity.

None of this is to suggest that such transactions do not carry big risks, both political and economic. But these risks can to some extent be mitigated by African governments.

Five broad conclusions can be drawn.

First, involving the private sector in post-conflict recovery efforts is no panacea.

Second, the fragility of all societies emerging from conflict means that private-sector involvement cannot simply be guided by profit and must also reinforce the broader aims of political stabilisation, human rights and good governance.

Third, analysis of the role of the private sector in peacebuilding needs to address the shift towards foreign state-backed investments where natural resources represent the most promising catalyst for the construction of essential national infrastructure.

Fourth, the caricature of no-strings-attached, no-questions-asked macro-finance does not describe the growing number of state-backed investors seeking long-term, commercially and politically viable relationships that depend on providing lasting benefits to both sides. Nor does it take account of the ongoing re-examination among African governments of the benefits and risks of aid-dependency.

Finally, while the early period of macro-finance investments has been dominated by Asian, and in particular Chinese, state-backed companies, there is no reason why others cannot compete on the same terms. Many African governments are attracted to the Chinese development model, but there is also a desire to avoid going from one form of dependency to another. This is an opportunity for western and other macro-finance investors willing to engage African governments as economic partners.

* Mats Berdal is professor of security and development at King's College London. Nader Mousavizadeh, a consulting senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, is a former investment banker at Goldman Sachs and served as special assistant to UN secretary-general Ko? Annan from 1997 to 2003. A longer version of this article will appear in the forthcoming issue of Survival

** Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010.