Africa Progress Panel (APP) meetings were organized to help inform the 2013 Africa Progress Panel Report which focuses on the theme “Equity in Extractives: Stewarding Africa’s natural resources for all”. As part of its contribution to this report, ACET co-hosted the African policymakers meeting themed, “Optimizing Natural Resources” in Accra, Ghana on October 31st, 2012.

The purpose of the meeting was to bring together senior policymakers involved in regulating the Mineral, Oil and Gas (MOG) sector and to facilitate an in-depth debate on challenges and opportunities of economic importance to the region.  The two topics that were addressed are detailed below:

  • Local content policies as a springboard for domestic linkages in the economies of resources rich countries in Sub-Sahara Africa: Optimizing the opportunities and minimizing the challenges.
  • What policies and institutional frameworks are necessary to enable African governments to capitalize on the growing role of investors from the BRICs in the MOG sector while successfully managing the unique challenges therein?

At the end of the day, a brief was put together that captured participants’ views on appropriate policy and institutional responses to the opportunities and challenges posed by the two issues.

At a follow-up meeting held by the APP in Geneva, Switzerland, Ms. Sheila Khama, ACET Director of Extractives presented a paper entitled, “Local Content Policies in Sub-Sahara’s Minerals, Oil and Gas (MOG) Sector”. During this presentation, she looked at the following key issues that surfaced from the focus group discussions held in October.

  • the choice between prescriptive and incentives based policies
  • the importance of defining the scope and focus of local content policies
  • the need to promote shared value between governments and investors
  • the gap between policy design and institutional capacity to implement
  • the absence of strong political leadership to steward policies
  • the lack of a thriving entrepreneurial class in the region to respond to opportunities

For further details of this report, kindly refer to the APP Expert Consultation Summary [ddownload id=”9420″ style=”link” text=”available here”].

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