This project examines the hypothesis set forth by Halvor Mehlum, Karl Moene and Ragnar Torvik., that institutional quality determines whether natural resource abundance becomes a blessing or a curse, by analysing the quality of institutions in the resource abundant Sub-Saharan country of Angola. By operationalizing institutional quality into the rule of law, bureaucratic quality, corruption and the business environment in Angola, both quantitative and qualitative data is applied, in order to analyse in-depth the impact of institutions. This project finds, that the institutions of Angola can be characterized as grabber-friendly, and see little structural transformation in the country, but that the economic growth in the period 2006 – 2013, cannot be accounted for by the hypothesis. Therefore it is concluded, that the hypothesis of Mehlum et al. lacks explanatory power to demonstrate why Angola has good growth rates, while exhibiting bad quality institutions.