On 21 and 22 March 2016, the African Union (AU), through the African Minerals Development Centre (AMDC) and in partnership the African Development Bank (AfDB), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), NEPAD, African continental and regional civil society actors, is organising a High-Level Roundtable on the Africa Mining Vision and the Extractive Sectors: Towards a Harmonised Governance Framework in Ethiopia. As home to a third of the world's mineral reserves, Africa's extractive sectors can be an important driver of structural transformation on the continent.
The AMV remains the leading continental policy instrument for the extractive sector and the continent's only tool that seeks to harmonize parallel frameworks that secure equitable and optimal exploitation of mineral resources to underpin broad-based sustainable growth and socio-economic development in Africa. The Roundtable will bring together 120 experts working in or around the extractive sector in Africa with a purpose of in order to examine in detail, the responses of various stakeholders in government, private sector and civil society to this new policy harmony. More specifically, the Roundtable will:
Establish a broad consensus among multi-level stakeholders at the Pan-African level, national governments, RECs, civil society, extractive companies and the private sector on the importance of a continental extractive sector governance framework based on the AMV;
Create a Roadmap and Multi-Stakeholder Taskforce for the development of an African Framework for Extractive Sector Governance under the auspices of the AMV;
Stimulate and foster a collaborative relationship between state and non-state actors, particularly African civil society, at the continental, regional and national levels for civic oversight over the governance of extractive sectors.
END Note for editors on the Africa Mining Vision: Formally adopted by African heads of state in 2009, the Africa Mining Vision (AMV) is the continent's own response to tackling the paradox of great mineral wealth existing side by side with pervasive poverty. Simply put, the AMV outlines the roadmap to the transparent, equitable and optimal exploitation of mineral resources to underpin broad-based sustainable growth and socio-economic development in Africa. For more information, please contact: Ms. Daisy Leoncio, Communications Officer for the African Minerals Development Centre (AMDC), by email at dleoncio@uneca.org or visit www.africaminingvision.org.
