Photo by: Bloomberg
The African Development Bank’s (AfDB’s) newly established African Natural Resources Centre (ANRC) has launched an online consultation to seek comments from stakeholders on its draft strategy for 2015 to 2020, which would outline ways in which it could support effective natural resources management by governments in Africa.
The centre outlined in a statement this week that the recommendations and comments received would aid it in assisting African countries to maximise development outcomes derived from Africa’s natural resources by boosting their capacity to achieve inclusive and sustained growth from natural resources.
“This series of consultations will help the ANRC better advise African countries on natural resources management policy formulation and implementation to enable them to extract greater economic and social value from the development of natural resources,” it explained.
The establishment of the ANRC by the AfDB came in a bid to enhance African countries’ capacity to improve development outcomes through the sustainable use of renewable and nonrenewable resources.
The centre aimed to achieve this through interventions that increased the effectiveness of public and private sector governance and institutional frameworks.
T
he ANRC, estimated that Africa’s exctractive sectors accounted for about 30% of all global mineral reserves.
Its proven oil reserves constituted 8% of the world’s reserves and those of natural gas amounted to 7%, while minerals accounted for an average of 70% of total African exports and about 28% of gross domestic product.