Workshop:

  • Preparatory summary
  • Participants
  • Minutes of the workshop

Context and Problem:

With an underdeveloped industrialization, growth models in Africa are rent-based with all their paradoxes and limits. As a result African economies are extraverted and placed at the world economy periphery with the low-status role of providing low cost inputs in the new international labor divide. This African economic dynamics extraversion (enclaved economy, concession and platform) is generating furthermore, unacceptable social and environmental externalities which make it imperative to cut off the rent logic and build African economies that are viable because of their negative effect on productivity, economic prosperity and social progress for all.

It is therefore necessary to create natural resources governance rules that are tailored to new development challenges and promote strategic sectors for which Africa has comparative advantages such as agriculture, mining resources manufacturing in order to create more added value and accelerate the emergence of the continent. Particular focus should be given to land resources which are threatened by land grab, to hydrographic resources which are at the foundation of any sustainable development and also agro-food chains which guarantee the continent’s food security.

Proposition 3: Adapting natural resources governance especially through issuing new rules

Issues for discussion

  • What values and governance principles for a profitable and durable natural resources management in the African continent development project?

  • How to use natural resources to the service of peace and development of African countries experiencing conflicts?

  • What new rules for an adapted governance of natural resources?

  • What orientations should be given to African development that will enable it to firmly integrate the obligation to protect the environment when exploiting natural resources?

  • What rules and partnership approach between African and « the rest of the world » in the Continent’s natural resources exploitation and development?

  • How to benefit from the demand boom for raw materials from emerging economies in order to push for a renewed industrial partnership that is more beneficial to Africa?

  • How to change the current organizational framework for concessions established by foreign investors in order to make African countries gain fair profit from the rise in the prices of raw materials which is not quasi profitable for them currently?

Proposition 4: Adapting land resources governance to African realities and needs of African societies

Issues for discussion

  • What type of values and land resources governance in Africa that takes into account sustainable needs and rights of African societies?

  • What rules and strategies to guarantee secure and protect Africa land resources from land grab attempts of big powers and foreign companies?

  • How to adapt « modern » regime of land governance to traditional land regulation mechanisms?

  • At the time when the world is expressing higher interest for Africa lands, what is the road map to guarantee Africans land rights toward shared prosperity promotion?

Proposition 5: Promoting an integrated and fair management of water and coastal zones

Issues for discussion

  • How to promote an integrated water management that is guarantying an equitable access to potable water for all African populations?

  • What water governance for a productive agriculture and durable food self-sufficiency in the Continent?

  • What schemes for the integrated management of coastal zones and African maritime waters for a peaceful, sustainable exploitation that respects biodiversity?

  • What principles and cooperation mechanisms between different actors who live around waters and coastal zones?

  • What water management strategies at the local, national and regional level that enable populations equitable access and adequate supply of other users?

Proposition 6 : Accompanying implementation of agro-food chains

Issues for discussion

  • What accompanying and sustaining strategies for agro-food chains tailored to African consumption needs and interests?

  • What are the current barriers to the development of African agro-food chains which if removed, will allow massive investment in the business sector?

  • What are the alternatives to liberate African agriculture put under structural adjustment? An agricultural system that has failed to connect with the continent’s realities, is very simplistic and not able to ensure efficiency in international markets?