Extractive Sector Regulations and Policy in Africa: Old Practices and New Models for Change

Regulatory variability in sub-Saharan Africa is based on the push and pull of domestic elite-driven governance orientations, including post-conflict and constitutional transitions, populist and local community political pressures, especially as electoral competition becomes a political reality, transnational influences, networks, and impositions, and competing discourses about the role and objecti. [...] The interplay of governance orientations, institutional pillars and competencies, and regulatory objectives and approaches creates a complicated web for policy-makers and stakeholders who aspire to leverage resource riches for socio-economic development. [...] Fourth, the rise of China and other extractive industry actors changed the landscape of investment: strategic agreements, non-market-based calculations of investment thresholds, and ready access to cheap equity and debt financing via government-backed banks and export credit agencies reduced dependence on Western capital markets. [...] If value maximization and mitigation objectives were the focus of the past 20 years, a swing of the pendulum back to the catalyzation of structural economic transformation objective characterizes the contemporary era of extractive industries in sub-Saharan Africa. [...] Both the content of new regulations and the uncertainty generated by substantive changes to the rules of the game will keep the risk averse away and attract only the strategic players and high-risk speculators.