Legal empowerment for local resource control

Lorenzo Cotula, Senegal, 2007
In Senegal, the APIX works to attract foreign investment.
Overall, security of resource rights tends to be problematic for both foreign
investors and local resource users in much of sub-Saharan Africa. But, in
many countries, efforts to secure these rights seem to have prioritised
foreign investment. In some cases, this is compounded by differences in the
speed of law-making processes: in Mali, for instance, the Pastoral Charter
2001 (a law aimed at securing the resource rights of pastoralists) took
several years to draft, and its implementing regulations were only adopted
in 2006; while the Mining Code 1999 and its regulations were adopted in a
very short period of time.
In addition, while many foreign investors are able to insulate their assets
and activities from the host state’s domestic legal system through a range of
legal devices (including investment contracts and international arbitration),
local resource users do not have recourse to these devices, and must rely on
the (weak) legal protection accorded by domestic law.
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