African oil, gas, mines, trade, finance meet in offing

UNCTAD's 14th African Oil, Gas, Mines, Trade, and Finance Conference will focus on harvesting value from natural resources development and retaining it on the African continent. Currently most of this value is lost to foreign companies at different stages along the minerals and metals value chains.

The conference will take place on November 21-25 in Sao Tome , Sao Tome and Principe.

African resources are increasingly attracting foreign investment. The trend by which value resulting from that investment is shifted overseas is compounded by the nature of the extractive industries. Such industries often operate as enclaves and lack links to the broader economies of the African nations where they are located. Moving out of enclave-type development requires establishing an "enabling environment" in which more extensive links to domestic African economies can be established. Experts recommend that African countries set up appropriate institutions, policies, and monitoring systems to support that process.

The conference will seek to identify appropriate government policies and will review experiences from elsewhere in the world to determine how the extractive sector can better drive economic growth within Africa. The meeting also will discuss how to design metrics for measuring value added in the sector so that the impact of initiatives to boost local participation can be better assessed.

As in previous years, the gathering will attract high-level officials from African governments, including ten ministers of energy, mining, and finance, and a broad array of executives from investment firms and from small and large petroleum and mining companies. Bankers, legal experts, and environmentalists also will attend. All told, some 250 participants are expected from more than 25 countries.

Opening the conference on the afternoon of November 21 will be Fradique de Menezes, President of Sao Tome & Principe; Patrice Trovoada, Prime Minister of Sao Tome & Principe; Carlos Vila Nova, the country's Minister of Natural Resources and Public Works; Petko Draganov, Deputy Secretary-General of UNCTAD; and Gana Fofang, UN Resident Coordinator and United Nations Development Programme Resident Representative for Sao Tome & Principe.

A pre-conference event will take place on November 20-21 to evaluate the progress of the Natural Resource Information Exchange, set up in response to a resolution adopted at last year's conference in Bamako , Mali. The objective of the exchange is to assist developing countries in Africa to transform mineral resources into wealth through the exchange of information -- historical and current -- on the resources available on the continent.