Cape Town: AFRICAN civic society groups have ganged up to lobby their respective governments to enact mining laws with a deliberate bias towards ensuring locals benefit from their mineral wealth.
This is according of a declaration made at the end of the 2017 Alternative Mining Indaba held in Cape Town, South Africa last week under the theme “making natural resources work for the people: domestication of the Africa mining vision: from vision to reality’’.
We urge African governments to push hard for stronger and better regulatory institutions to ensure that the benefits of extraction are shared equitably.
“We call on governments to not only focus on revenue mobilisation but also the distribution end to ensure that the poorest in society also benefit from the mineral wealth transparently and accountably,” the CSO’s said in a communique.
“Furthermore, we call on our governments to harmonise regional policies to improve the benefit of extractives to African citizens. We call upon African governments to fully optimise mining revenues by tackling over generous fiscal incentives, corruption and lack of transparency.
“We call on our governments to review or re-negotiate contracts unfavourable to their countries to raise revenue to fund structural transformation of their economies.”
