Is a unified mineral and energy resources classification system, the way to go for Africa?
"Africa was losing in excess of 50Billion USD annually in illicit financial flows".......Frank Mugyenyi - Industry Advisor AU.
Since pre-independence period, Most of Africa's natural mineral resources have been mapped, extracted managed the resultant Financial value chains managed by foreign Companies. By such, they have been viewed as not beneficial to the individual communities and countries at large.
In most parts of Africa, for example, Nigeria, Central African Republic, Sudan and South Sudan, poor oil mineral resource mapping and extraction has led to perennial civil wars for ownership and benefits sharing of such resources. In March 2021, Reuters quoted the UN group of experts having reported that Gold production in the Congo is systematically underreported and tones of the precious metal are smuggled into global supply chains through its eastern neighbors.
This has been a consistent trend across many other African states, where mineral resources are under-reported and illegally extracted and smuggled to international markets by corrupt governments, costing such countries billions of dollars annually.
The move by Mining stakeholders to have a unified mineral and energy resources classification system in Africa will go a long way in reducing resource conflicts and control mineral and energy resources under-reporting problems.
However, for this to succeed, African countries should commit on breaking the chains of illicit mineral resources black markets. Further, External countries that have been fighting for control of such minerals should remove their hands in such resource management, and on the contrary empower African states to effectively manage the entire value chains of such resources including the resultant financial gains.
This should include unnecessary Asset Financing of poor African states using such resources and companies as collateral, as this creates an avenue for resource Under-reporting, hence under-utilization.
However, if well managed, the unified resource mapping and reporting will go a long way in developing African states ability to manage and benefit from its minerals and Natural resources.
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