Extractive Transparency and Accountability is the pillar for citizen participation, investment attraction and use of extractive resources. If the people know, risks to tax evasion, corruption and the resource curse are reduced.

The East African region is awash with vast natural resources. Over the past five years, the East African region has registered significant discoveries of Oil in the Albertine Graben in Uganda and Turkana in Kenya. The prospects of Natural gas along the coast line of Somalia are promising. Few years ago Tanzania discovered massive natural gas deposits along its coastline adding already to its large extractive resources base. By these standards, the region has a potential for enjoying a natural resource boom.
However, experiences from Tanzania have shown that weak governance and oversight deficits can thwart benefits from the sector. Reports show that for decades the Country was not able to harness the vast extractive resources for development. The government lost revenue through bad contracts with mining companies and communities did not significantly benefit from the minerals and mining operations in their areas. In DRC minerals have been a source of conflict and the environmental impact is tremendous.

Tanzania is a signatory and  member to global transparency and accountability standards such as the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI). Tanzania has enacted  some of these principles into a national law,  the Tanzania Extractive Industries Act (TEITA) 2015. The country has established in law, a Multistakeholder body (comprising of government, civil society and companies), as platform for continuous consultation and mutual accountability. However there are deficits on some frontiers of transparency such as not publishing yet signed extractive contracts. Tanzania’s milestones on transparency partly inspired it East African neighbor  Uganda, to sign up to the initiative. The EITI provides an opportunity for East African Countries such as Tanzania, Uganda and DRC to  expand their transparency frontier  and thus expanding  citizens participation and attraction of largescale investment into their extractive sectors. However, citizens awareness and participation is still limited and governance deficits still exist.

This project  seeks to help  governments improve their transparency standards in policy and practice and citizens to be more aware and to participate in the extractive sector via;

  • Analytical pieces on extractive Transparency and Accountability
  • Local and International Advocacy on extractive governance and economic justice
  • Training and convenings on extractive sector governance

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