This report explores common resource governance successes and challenges in sub-Saharan Africa. The authors conclude that policymakers, parliamentarians, civil society, media and regional institutions must focus on narrowing the implementation gap between extractive sector laws and actual practice, which will help to restore trust between government, communities and investors and thus strengthen sustainable management of natural resources. 

  

   

   

Fiscal rules—permanent quantitative constraints on government finances—are an important tool to help mitigate the macroeconomic challenges associated with managing natural resource revenues. This paper sheds light on large gaps in compliance and oversight of fiscal rules, and provides policy recommendations on how fiscal rules can be further strengthened.

Oversight actors can detect and prevent corruption in the oil, gas and mining sectors if they ask the right questions. Corruption schemes can be complex and opaque, yet clear patterns and similar signs of problematic behavior do exist across resource-rich countries.

The sale of crude oil by governments and their national oil companies (NOCs) is one of the least scrutinized aspects of oil sector governance. This report is the first detailed examination of those sales, and focuses on the top ten oil exporting countries in sub-Saharan Africa.