This policy brief attempted to identify common factors in successful local content strategies by comparing the experiences of countries that have achieved reasonable positive local content outcomes. In order to do so, the experiences of seven Latin American and seven African countries was analyzed which used a comparative strategy which makes it possible to identify conditions that are present across cases that are very different from one another in many respects, but
which have led to success in the implementation of local content frameworks. Latin America and Africa are natural resource rich. The two regions depend on commodities for their foreign exchange earnings. Historically high international prices for these commodities have incentivised the exploitation of natural resources in these regions. Countries from both regions have created
mechanisms to capture as much revenue as possible from their gas and oil industries and created the conditions to expand the benefits to other economic sectors. These mechanisms – known as local content – have gained popularity among African and Latin American policy makers over recent years and are the subject of this policy briefing paper.
