Africa’s Extractive Governance Architecture: Lessons to Inform a Shifting Agenda

Photo: Media Club, Graeme Williams
Photo: Media Club, Graeme Williams

Careful reflection is needed in examining options for streamlining and capacitating the myriad Africa-led initiatives that have emerged recently in the area of resource governance.

The best known among them – the Africa Mining Vision (AMV) and its implementing arm, the African Minerals Development Centre (AMDC) – have faced implementation challenges since the AMV’s endorsement by African heads of state in 2009. This briefing argues that important insights emerging from ground-level research by African institutions should play a greater role in shaping the new African-inspired resource governance frameworks. These initiatives should also try to engage more systematically with the experiences of forerunner frameworks, many of which have accumulated years of potentially useful experience on addressing resource management issues in the African context. Finally, the twin challenges of duplication in African efforts and the lack of appropriate technical capacity to guide them must be addressed if the recent shift to African leadership in this policy area is to gain meaningful traction.

The views expressed in this publication/article are those of the author/s and do not necessarily reflect the views of the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA).

14 May 2014