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Extractive Industries (oil, gas, and mining)

This list distributes information on extractive industries (oil, gas, and mining) and their economic, social and environmental impact in East Africa, the Horn of Africa and the Sudan.

Eastern Africa’s extractive resources attract growing attention. Exploration is going on in virtually all countries of the region, as Uganda already produces oil in commercial quantities, and as preparations for large-scale titanium mining are taking shape on Kenya’s coast – to name but a few examples.

Extractive industries raise great expectations, because substantial revenues generated by them provide opportunities for national development. However, experiences in many African countries (notably Nigeria, Angola, and the DR Congo) show that resource extraction carries severe risks as well. Mining and oil production do not only bring about environmental hazards and lead to displacement of local communities and social dislocation. Revenues from extractive industries also frequently lead to what economists and social scientists have called the “resource curse”, bringing about inflation and the decay of agriculture and local industries, growing corruption and mismanagement, and an increased (and, in some cases, manifestly violent) political competition for control of resources and revenues.

Various initiatives exist to address such negative effects of resource extraction, namely the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) and the civil society-based Publish What You Pay (PWYP) campaign in the oil sector, as well as certification schemes for timber or diamonds.

This mailing list addresses the interested public in Eastern Africa; reading and posting is open to everybody. The list has been established by the Nairobi office of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, a civic educational agency affiliated to the Green Party in Germany. (http://www.hbfha.com)

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