'From Vision to Practice: The role of civil society in advancing the implementation of the Africa mining vision’

The African continent is known for its abundant natural resources, but also for its shortcomings in relation to governance and transparency in managing the revenues that come from these resources. To address this, the African Union (AU) adopted the Africa Mining Vision (AMV) in 2009. The AMV is a framework which seeks to advance the inclusive and just socio-economic development of African countries through the use of mineral resources to support structural transformation on the continent. This vision is shared by all the Union’s Member States. However, ten years on from adopting this framework, it still faces huge obstacles in terms of implementation, both for public and private bodies in the sector in question, and for civil society organisations that are, nonetheless, key stakeholders in this process… The findings indicate that uptake of the vision is still lacking and that civil society is not fully playing its part in developing policies and legislation in order to better integrate the AMV into national or regional policy and practice.

… The AMV seeks to foster a transparent, equitable and optimal exploitation of mineral resources to underpin broad-based sustainable growth and socio-economic development. This sustainable growth should move away from a revenue first model of extractive-led development to that of mineral- focused, that places development front and centre of the mineral value chain, including upstream, downstream and sidestream opportunities for transforming the sector to an engine for structural transformation through industrialization and diversification. However, ten years after African leaders adopted the AMV, very few countries have aligned their minerals policies to the reform agenda, which seeks to stimulate a paradigm shift in mineral resource governance. This lack of uptake at national level is an obstacle to its implementation, not just for States, but also for civil society organisations.