Multinational experts from  Liberia, Mozambique, Malawi, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Australia and host, Cameroon,began meeting in yesterday July 4, 2013 to draft the document which will be taken as a handbook when it is finally drawn up.

African countries are in quest of a manual for the negotiation of mining contracts. The document whose drafting is ongoing in a two-day (July 4-5) workshop in Yaounde, will serve as a guide for negotiators so that the needs of the government and that of the population are fully taken care of in any mining contract to be signed in the continent.

Mining experts from Liberia, Mozambique, Malawi, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Australia and host, Cameroon, taking part in the workshop are unanimous that the continent is enormously rich in mineral products (soft and liquid) but that the inexperience with which countries go to the negotiation table with mining companies for exploration and productions often disfavours the countries and their population. They were upbeat that with a unique and harmonised mining contract negation manual, the continent’s seemingly weak mining institutions and governance which often plunge its blessings into “natural resource curse” or feeds the theory of the “Paradox of Plenty,” would belong to history.

The tact and time with which the government of Cameroon took to negotiate the Mbalam Mining Convention with Australia’s Sundance Resources Ltd with wide-ranging benefits for the local population in terms of infrastructural development and employment masterminded the ongoing reflection on a unique and harmonised manual for mining contract negation in the continent. According to Prof. Fabien Nkot, Senior Adviser to the Prime Minister, who is heading the Cameroonian delegation in the drafting team, “we were surprised that the convention we signed with Sundance Resources Ltd was appreciated by both the Australians and other international institutions. They said it was uncommon for an African country to have signed such a convention in a very short space of time and with such contents.” Like Professor Nkot, Serge Yanic Nana, Director General BMCE Capital who was Lead Adviser of the Mbalam Project, said the fact that Cameroon organised itself and recruited advisers contributed to the success of the convention which today serves as a reference in Africa.

“The highest authorities of the country advised us to hire international advisers and we got a Mining and Railway Adviser from South Africa, Legal Adviser from the USA and a Financial Adviser from Cameroon. They advised us throughout the process and we also set up a local team of mining and railway experts as well as on legal and financial issues,” they said. Other participants like Melvin Sheriff from Liberia, Fui Tsikata from Ghana and Jill Howieson from Australia said there is need to federate efforts and expertise in the would-be manual so that foreign investors do not continue to feed fat on the many rich resources of the continent’s subsoil while its population languish in abject poverty as is almost the case now.