April 2017 News and Analysis from NRGI

News from NRGI
28 April 2017

Highlights

Twelve Red Flags: Corruption Risks in the Award of Extractive Sector Licenses and Contracts
Oversight actors can detect and prevent corruption in the oil, gas and mining sectors if they ask the right questions. NRGI has developed this list of 12 red flags of corruption in license and contract awards, with real-world illustrations for each.

Executive Course on Oil, Gas and Mining Governance

A unique collaboration between the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government and NRGI, this intensive five-day course provides the training and insight required for senior policy-makers from around the world to manage and better govern their nation’s oil, gas or mineral resources. There are a limited number of scholarships covering the full cost of tuition, available to eligible candidates from a select number of resource-rich countries.

Blog

Nigeria Watchdog Journalism Plays Essential Role in Malabu Oil Scandal Probe
Idris Akinbajo, the managing editor of Premium Times, played a critical role in the website's series on the Malabu/OPL 245 oil scandal, and credits international exposure and his media house’s support system for the series’ impact. He also highlights the role NRGI’s institutional grants played in facilitating follow-up reporting.

Securing Mining Revenues: Good Practice from Zambia, Tanzania, South Africa
NRGI’s regional report on preventing tax base erosion showed that many mineral-rich countries in Africa face similar challenges in applying “global standards” to stop multinationals from using cross-border transactions to avoid tax. These new case studies of South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia describe alternative legal and institutional mechanisms that these countries have put in place to control the price of mineral exports, operational and capital expenditures, and the cost of debt.

Publications

Subnational Revenue Sharing in the DRC after Découpage: Four Recommendations for Better Governance

In 2015, the Congolese parliament passed a new administrative law that divided the country’s 11 existing provinces into 26. This change in provincial borders, known as découpage, also altered the dynamics of who benefits from some of the mining revenues. This briefing (also available in French) maps changes to revenue flows and shows that with the new borders, mining revenues are concentrated in three new, smaller provinces.

Spotlight on data

How can ResourceContracts Help Model a Mining Project? An Example from Malawi

Annotated Kayelekera contract on ResourceContracts.org.

Rachel Etter-Phoya, of Malawi's Citizens for Justice, and a former minister of mining in the country used the 2007 mining development agreement for Kayelekera uranium mine, found on ResourceContracts.org, to build a financial model of Malawi’s largest mine, which contributed about 3 percent to the country’s 2013 GDP.

Video

Corruption in the Energy Sector

NRGI's Daniel Kaufmann spoke with Red por la Rendición de Cuentas, a Mexican civil society organization, about inequality, corruption and the energy sector in this Spanish-language interview.