Goree Institute Holds Expert Round Table on Extractives for Conflict Prevention
By Mohamed Konneh
With Financial support from Ford Foundation, the Goree Institute on Monday 27th November 2023 begins a two-day Expert Round Table Conference on the Responsible and Inclusive Management of Extractive Resources for Conflict Prevention in Dakar, Senegal bringing experts from six resource rich countries in West Africa. Participants are drawn from Ivory Coast, Guinea, Senegal, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Ghana.
The round table conference is taking place at the conference room of Goree Institute, Goree Island, Dakar in Senegal from 27 – 28th November 2023.
Giving the overview of the two-day Expert Round Table Conference the Project Manager, Mineral Resource Governance at Goree Institute Houleymatou Balde, said Goree Institute is a pan-African civil society organization that promotes peaceful, autonomous, open societies through research, reflection, capacity building, and direct intervention.
Ms. Balde said having the round table on the island of Goree, is part of the project title: "Towards a West African citizen synergy for transparency and equity in the management and redistribution of extractive industry resources".
She said the project aims to share the experience, lessons learned, and best practice models of the project implemented in Senegal and experiences generated by other countries, with other countries at different stages of managing revenues generated by mineral resources in West Africa.
In his statement the Executive Director of Goree Institute, Mr. Doudou Dia thanked the participants for coming especially colleagues from Sierra Leone who came leaving behind their country with some trouble of attempted coup.
He said the project supporting this round table is a support from the Ford Foundation that enabled Goree Institute to successfully organize a regional workshop dedicated to reflecting on and sharing the results of studies on the governance of extractive resources and training seminars on Mechanisms for the Prevention and Management of Conflicts linked to extractive resources.
Mr. Dia said the Round Table on Responsible and Inclusive Management of Extractive Resources for Conflict Prevention is a kind of a step forward as far as the natural governance resource project is concerned. ‘This event is conceived as a continuation of previous workshops, namely the Regional Workshop for the Restitution of Studies on the Management of Extractive Resources and the Training Workshop on Conflict Prevention Mechanisms,’ he said.
The Executive Director of Goree Institute said when we talk about this conference and the extractive sector we talk about climate change and that round table is to explore together the aspect of governance in the sector.
‘Our work as CSOs is to work together. How to make sure natural resources work for communities. Resources belong to people so people must benefit from it. How do we move from this, he continued.
Mr. Dia said there is every need to work together as Africans.
‘Are communities involved in this when it comes to the distribution of resources? Are the distributions of wealth from natural resources done responsibly? While we discuss during the round table let us have these as food for thought and how this conference will allow us to discuss and come forward with critical issues affecting the sub-region,’ he said.
He said from the conference ‘we are sharing knowledge, we have to be open and each and every one should be able to come with views that reflect us.
‘How do we bridge the gap between francophone and Anglophone countries when it comes to the extractive sector, he asked.
Making his statement the Minister of Oil and Energy in Senegal, Mr. Amadou Soumare starts by congratulating Goree Institute for holding the two day round table conference bringing experts in the sector.
The Minister said it is good to discuss conflict management and conflict prevention in the sector and that the ministry has always involve in such discuss.
He said the government has always tried to be transparent and to include stakeholders in the sector when it comes to it activities.
‘On the oil and gas the government has always been open when awarding contracts and the recent awards of block is one big example.
We are working on the management of oil and gas and very soon stakeholders will be inform and invited. It is always good to work on transparency in the extractive sector as this prevents conflict,’ he said.
Mr. Soumare noted that he is also part of the round table to learn from the pool of experts and at the end of the meeting there will be a common ground for all. ‘The simple word for us all is to a rich expert discussion that we will all learn from. The ministry of oil and energy is always willing to be part of such discuss.’ he said.
