Sierra Leone Launches Country Contract Repository, While Global ResourceContracts.org Site Passes 1,000 Document Milestone
The Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI), the World Bank and the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (CCSI) have partnered with the Ministry of Mines and Mineral Resources in Sierra Leone to implement a ResourceContracts.org country site that publishes mining contracts and associated documents.
In January, Deputy Minister Abdul Ignosi Koroma made a commitment to publish contracts in the country’s extractives sector on ResourceContracts.org, with the intention of complementing existing transparency initiatives in Sierra Leone. The deputy minister also highlighted the importance of providing summaries of contract provisions in order to facilitate public understanding of the contracts.
The Sierra Leone ResourceContracts.org country site will be managed by the Ministry of Mines and Mineral Resources in collaboration with the National Minerals Agency, which will add contextual information and associated documents to complement Sierra Leone’s existing iron ore, diamond and bauxite contracts on the site.
Sierra Leone ResourceContracts.org website
The Sierra Leone ResourceContracts.org website is hosted at www.nma.gov.sl/resourcecontracts
The partners behind ResourceContracts.org continue to work with governments and country-level EITI groups to publish extractives contracts as open data. Sierra Leone becomes the third country to establish a ResourceContracts.org country, site following the Philippines (2015) and Guinea (2013).
At the ongoing EITI Global Conference we have also announced that ResourceContracts.org now hosts more than 1,000 contracts and associated documents, passing an important milestone. Contracts are available across 72 countries and 38 different resources.
Since the relaunch of the site in 2015, more than 300 contract documents have been added including:
- More than 250 contracts from Peru, from both the mining and hydrocarbons sectors
- Contracts from a several EITI countries including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bolivia, Mozambique and Zambia
About ResourceContracts.org
The ResourceContracts.org site is an online repository of oil, gas and mining contracts developed in partnership between the World Bank, the Natural Resource Governance Institute and the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment. The site enables CSOs, governments and researchers to search; view summaries of key social, environmental, fiscal and operational provisions; and download full contracts as open data. The site was relaunched in 2015 with new features and contracts.
Anders Pedersen is the open data officer at NRGI. Charles Young is a technical consultant working with NRGI. Sophie Thomashausen is a senior legal researcher at CCSI.
