Legal empowerment for local resource control

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the Middle East, to sub-Saharan Africa, which includes the poorest countries
in the world. Sub-Saharan African countries present great diversity in terms
of culture, level of GDP, political system and legal tradition. However, they
also present important commonalities in terms of history, average GDP
levels compared to other regions of the world, economic development
challenges, and issues concerning resource access for local resource users.
Given the important specificities (legal, cultural, historical, political, etc.)
differentiating Northern Africa from the rest of the continent, the focus here
is on sub-Saharan Africa alone.
The study draws particularly on the legal experience of Cameroon, Ghana,
Mozambique, Senegal and Tanzania. Where relevant, legislation and case
law from other African countries are also analysed. This selection of
countries enables comparisons of experience from different parts of Africa
(West Africa: Ghana and Senegal; Central Africa: Cameroon; East Africa:
Tanzania; and Southern Africa: Mozambique); and from different legal
traditions (Anglophone, Francophone and Lusophone).