Position Paper

New Approaches for Extractive Resource Governance in Africa

The African Union’s Agenda 2063 reaffirms both Africa’s development ambition and the expected role of partnership for extractive governance in the next phase of Africa’s development. Its vision of “[a]n integrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa, driven by its own citizens and representing a dynamic force in the global arena” is attainable given Africa’s vast resource endowments, including minerals, hydrocarbons and renewable energy. To achieve such positive outcomes, the following action steps must take center stage: Individual African governments need to prioritise evidence-led policy formulation, identifying both their national competitive advantages along global minerals value chains and the resource-focused global partnerships.  Within African sub-regions, governments and other extractive sector stakeholders should engage more systematically in lesson sharing, standard setting and other similar exchanges. Extractive sector stakeholders such as multilaterals, think tanks and NGOs should focus increasingly on convening and brokering targeted dialogues on extractive sector transformation. Pan-African institutions such as the African Union should link their policy processes like the African Mining Vision and the Agenda 2063 vision more explicitly to global development dialogues. A renewed regional focus on building African capacities for resource management is needed with the aim of stimulating infrastructure and skills development.