Arfican oil, gas, mine meet plans task force

UNCTAD's Least Developed Countries Report 2010 was unveiled on Friday at the conclusion of the organisation's 14th conference on African natural resources. UNCTAD deputy secretary-general Petko Draganov told the gathering that the report -- matching the theme of the conference -- urges the world's 49 poorest nations to broaden their economies so that they benefit from, but are less dependent on, commodities such as raw natural resources. Most LDCs, as these countries are called, are in Africa.
The focus of this year's 14th UNCTAD Oil, Gas and Mines, Trade and Finance Conference and Exhibition was on how to harvest greater value from natural resources development, and how to retain it on the African continent. Patrice Trovoada, Prime Minister of Sao Tomé & Principe, opened the annual session by citing the so-called "resource-curse syndrome," in which the harvesting of a country's natural resources often leads to increases in poverty. He called for policy coordination in the development ofnatural resources in Africa to improve the contribution of extractive industries to the continent's development.
This year's LDC report, released today, is subtitled 'Towards a New International Development Architecture'. It stresses, as Draganov said, that LDCs, with the support of re-oriented international aid programmes, must escape the boom-bust cycles that plague their resource-dependent economies, and must improve their 'productive capacities'.
Productive capacity is a country's ability to produce a wide variety of goods, both for domestic consumption and export, and goods that contain greater 'value added' -- that is, products which domestic intellectual and manufacturing work have upgraded so that they command higher profits and pay higher wages to those who make them.
Demand for such goods is often more steady, and prices are more stable, than for commodities. The 14th conference was held for the first time in Sao Tomé, Sao Tomé & Principe. It ran from November 21-25.
The Republic of Guinea will host the next conference in November 2011. A major outcome was a resolution recommending that a task force to be set up by African governments 'to work on the methods and evaluation criteria of the local content in the area of natural resources in genera'. The references to be used by the task force fall within the framework of the Africa Mining Vision already established by the African Union.
"The criteria," the resolution says, "should serve as benchmarks for those in charge of the articulation and the follow-up to national development plans." Discussions during the meeting stressed that steps should be taken to lessen the 'enclave' nature of natural-resource extraction in African countries. Instead, participants said, links should be established between national economies and the operations -- often foreign-designed and run -- that harvest these resources.
Some speakers said there would be merit in using extractive industry revenues to finance diversification into other economic activities. And strategies suggested included using petroleum revenues to build economic capacity and 'enable and empower' local companies.
In his concluding remarks, Kwabena Baah-Duodu, senior advisor to the UNCTAD secretary general and officer in charge of the UNCTAD's Special Unit on Commodities stressed the importance of comprehensive natural resources management policies that will boost local content and create wealth in host countries for the benefit of the majority of their populations. The conference also reviewed progress to date on an African Natural Resources Exchange (NRIE), a project begun following a recommendation of the 13th conference held last year in Bamako, Mali.