Briefing Paper

Managing Natural Resources for Development in East Africa: Examining Key Issues with the Region’s Oil and Natural Gas Discoveries Roadmap Report

A series of short briefings which covers different subjects, is contained in this paper. These are related to the oil and natural gas discoveries in East Africa, with the goal of providing an overview of the research done by AGI on these topics and a summary of key issues arising from the various forums. These topics are covered in the following sections: Land rights issues and the link to oil and natural gas exploration. The paper examines how land rights and government policies regarding land use affect communities with respect to oil and natural gas exploration and how these policies can be improved to support and secure the rights of local communities. The next section examines how government capacity and transparency are critical for effective revenue usage. Balancing local and national development priorities in resource revenue use. In the following section it is examined how governments and CSOs are proposing to manage revenues from the new natural resources. Achieving economic growth and stability through the fiscal management of natural resource revenues. Similar to the previous section’s focus on development priorities, this section looks at strategies and options for saving and investing oil and natural gas revenues to ensure that countries are able to benefit from innovative fiscal management, both now and in the future. The role of civil society organizations in oil and natural gas transparency. The last section examines the status of CSOs in the region, while also looking at how they can be better supported in their work and the policies that they find important.