Dialogue On Natural Resources Management in Africa in Addis Ababa

Coalition for Dialogue on Africa (CoDA), the Initiative for African Land Policy (LPI) and Section Support to the Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) of the ECA will organize a day of dialogue on natural resources management in Africa on October 22, 2012, in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia).

Entitled: "optimizing state-society dialogue for better natural resources management in Africa," the meeting will be opened by the CoDA Board Chairperson, Festus Mogae, former head of state of Botswana.

Members of the APRM Panel, the CoDA Board, civil society operatores, researchers, policy-makers and the people's representatives will take part in this meeting, which will be organized around four thematic sessions.

As a prelude to the 8th African Development Forum (AFD), the participants in the day of dialogue should consider the possibilities of a genuine partnership between African governments and their citizens in order to mobilize the continent's mining and natural resources for growth and poverty reduction.

Discussions at the forum will also focus on ways to ensure that Africa concludes equitable and mutually beneficial contracts for the exploitation of its natural resources with its foreign partners.

The first session of the day will help provide a complete overview of the current situation of natural resources governance in Africa, while the second will provide an opportunity to conduct a study of concrete cases by way of examples in Angola, Algeria and Nigeria.

This second thematic session will also discuss the situation in Southern Africa and identify prospects for natural resources governance in the African sub-region.

This series of evaluation will be followed by the third session dedicated to the framework and guidelines and shall focus entirely on the question "How accountability to citizens may be encouraged in countries with natural resources, especially when they are not tax-based?"

The third thematic session will also look into natural resources governance partnerships between emerging countries known as "BRICS" and sub-regional organizations in Africa. Participants in this session will reflect on ways and means to finally optimize the APRM within the context of mineral resources governance for Africa's development.

Recommendations from the three thematic sessions will be synthesized during the 4th session devoted to the way forward delivered by H.E. Festus Mogae; the senior minister, at the President's office (Senegal), Abdoulaye Bathily; and Joan Kagwanja of LPI.

Key political messages of the day will then be forwarded to the eighth ADF scheduled for October 23-25 in the Ethiopian capital. CoDA and LPI have organized two retreats on foreign direct investment on lands in Africa respectively in Lisbon in June 2011 and in Nairobi in October 2011. http://allafrica.com/stories/201210221378.html