After decades of largely being sidelined while profits from their mineral resources accrued to foreign firms and kleptocratic local leaders, Africa’s new leaders, both democratic and autocratic, want a greater slice of the pie. Some want to achieve this at the negotiating table while others employ much rougher methods. Multinational companies should hurry to find sustainable ways in which they can share risk and revenue with governments, as they do in jurisdictions like Norway (where taxes are as high as 78%) and the United Arab Emirates. Animating Kenya’s anti-tax government shutdown this year, concepts of “decoloniality” now drive youth protests, inspire coup leaders such as those in Mali and drive some policy making in democratic states. It is particularly influential in countries where large oil, gas, and mineral finds have been made, from Namibia to Mozambique and South Africa. Its influence has seen old and new mining contracts in Botswana, Senegal, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia and elsewhere being renegotiated.
BLOOMBERG