Accelerating Responsive and Transparent Extractive Industry Resource Governance

In 2016 Democracy International, in partnership with the South African Institute of International Affairs, initiated the USAID-funded Accelerating Responsive and Transparent Extractive Industry Resource Governance (ARTEIG) project, designed to collect information, document lessons learned, and share knowledge and experiences about Multi-Stakeholder Initiatives (MSIs). MSIs include the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), a mechanism to encourage conformity on political, economic, and corporate governance values, codes, and standards among African countries; the Open Government Partnership (OGP), a multilateral initiative that aims to secure concrete commitments from governments to promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technologies; and the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), a global standard to promote the open and accountable management of extractive resources. In the past decade, these and other MSIs have emerged as promising new avenues to enhance accountability and improve civil society-government collaboration. Despite their profile and duration, however, evidence on the effectiveness of these initiatives is relatively limited. ARTEIG accordingly offered ideas and information to expand and focus USAID’s participation in these MSIs as part of the agency’s larger goals of promoting transparent governing, responsive and open extractive and natural resource governance, and productive civil society-government collaboration.

Photo credit: Julien Harneis