By Kizito CUDJOE
Uganda, Ghana and other resource-rich African countries should domesticate the African Mining Vision (AMV) to improve transparency and better-manage mining revenues, the head of a continental debt and development network has urged.
Executive Director-African Forum and Network on Debt and Development (AFRODAD), Jason Braganza, noted that countries such as Ghana should work to domesticate the continental framework to improve transparency and accountability in the extractives sector.
While acknowledging the “significant strides in implementing initiatives like the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative” by Ghana, Mr. Braganza stressed that there is a need to go further “to domesticate AMV”.
This, he said, is “to ensure that the extractive sector is managed correctly, with revenues and rents collected for the continent’s benefit”.
The AMV, endorsed by African heads of state in 2009, aims to shift the focus of mining policies beyond revenue generation to broader structural transformation; including local value addition, linkages to other sectors and environmental sustainability.
Mr. Braganza in a press briefing on the sidelines of the 11th session of the Africa Regional Forum on Sustainable Development and a pre-event on financing sustainable development in Kampala, Uganda, noted that many African countries continue to face challenges in translating mineral wealth into tangible benefits for citizens, citing weak institutions and limited public oversight as persistent concerns.
As a result, he said there is a “need to enhance parliamentary oversight, establishing specific committees or subcommittees within the parliamentary system to hold both government and businesses accountable for their operations in the mining sector”.
Ghana is among the few countries in Africa which have introduced a Beneficial Ownership (BO) register. The AFRODAD boss observed that: “Beneficial ownership means knowledge of the enterprise’s true owners, enabling tracking of investments, revenue generation and tax contributions remaining in the country. Such registers are crucial for transparency”.
In his recommendations for resource-rich African countries to especially address the rising challenge of Illicit Financial Flows (IFF) on the continent which pertains to the extractive sector, he also called for the creation of robust tax policies and fiscal regimes around the mining sector.
He said this ensures that the taxation regimes, cost recovery regimes and cost minimisation regimes favour countries like Ghana and its people, rather than the companies involved.
AFRODAD argued that the amount of money lost through illicit financial flows is estimated to be around US$80 to US$90billion annually. This is both through licit and illegal ways of doing business on the continent.
“This is a huge problem because it contributes to having deficits on the continent, which then forces governments to borrow. Dealing with illicit financial flows becomes a significant part of why the debt crisis is emerging and deepening.”
He observed that “this is money African governments have to find through taxation, largely through regressive taxes”.
“The opportunities therein need to be very specific in terms of national-level interventions, but also coherent in terms of a coordinated continental set of interventions. Some of these are presented in the high-level panel report on illicit financial flows, the Beckie panel report of 2015.”
It is on the back of these developments that he said the Kampala meeting was also to discuss what could be the critical driver of the multi-polar and multi-crisis conundrum facing Africa.
“A key feature has been on how to generate opportunities that have been afforded to us as a region through the African Continental Free Trade Area, through curbing illicit financial flows and also building momentum and coherence around a comprehensive debt reform package that we need to advance as a continent – and also reforming the global debt architecture.”
