Natural Resources

The African Sovereign Debt Justice Network, (AfSDJN), is a coalition of citizens, scholars, civil society actors and church groups committed to exposing the adverse impact of unsustainable levels of African sovereign debt on the lives of ordinary citizens. Convened by Afronomicslaw.org with the support of Open Society for Southern Africa, (OSISA), the AfSDJN's activities are tailored around addressing the threats that sovereign debt poses for economic development, social cohesion and human rights in Africa. It advocates for debt cancellation, rescheduling and restructuring as well as increasing the accountability and responsibility of lenders and African governments about how sovereign debt is procured, spent and repaid. Focusing in particular on Kenya, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Nigeria and Senegal, the AfSDJN will also amplify African voices and decolonize narratives on African sovereign debt . Its activities include producing research outputs to enhance the network’s advocacy interventions. It also seeks to create awareness on and elevate the priority given to sovereign debt and other economic justice issues on the African continent and beyond throughout 2021.

Recent disclosures under the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) have been critical in exposing these discrepancies by comparing national export data with international trade statistics. These findings have reframed gold smuggling as a systemic governance and fiscal challenge and have prompted renewed policy attention on curbing IFFs, strengthening traceability, and improving revenue capture in Cameroon’s gold sector. This update examines how EITI-exposed discrepancies in Cameroon’s gold export data have brought illicit financial flows into sharp focus, triggered government enforcement measures, and highlighted the role of global trading hubs, particularly the UAE, in facilitating revenue losses from Africa’s extractive sectors.

On the 10 June 2025, the Zimbabwean government announced that it would ban the export of lithium concentrate, with the ban is scheduled to take effect from January 2027. Zimbabwe, Africa’s largest lithium producer, has positioned lithium at the centre of its economic transformation agenda as global demand for battery minerals accelerates due to the expansion of electric vehicles and renewable energy storage technologies. This update examines Zimbabwe’s evolving lithium policy as the government seeks to maximise national benefits through export bans and domestic beneficiation requirements. It analyses the rationale, timelines and political economy of the proposed bans on lithium ore and concentrate exports, while interrogating the ownership structures of dominant Chinese firms such as Sinomine and Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt.

Guinea occupies a structurally significant position in the global minerals economy as the world’s largest holder of bauxite reserves and second leading producer of the ore, which is indispensable for aluminium production and increasingly recognised as strategically important to global industrial supply chains. This update examines Guinea’s intensifying resource nationalism in the global bauxite sector, focusing on the revocation of mining licences, the resulting high-value international arbitration claims, and the government’s planned legal defence. It situates these developments within broader African debates on bauxite’s strategic importance, mineral governance, and efforts to reclaim sovereign control and value from critical raw materials.

There is renewed interest in the Nigeria- Sao Tome and Principle (STP) Joint Development Zone (JDZ). This is explored in a published chapter in the Nigerian Yearbook of International law (with co-authors). This chapter focused on the Nigeria-STP JDZ as an exemplar of a cooperative approach to maritime boundary delimitation and assesses the suitability of the particular JDZ model chosen. Therefore, this appears to be an excellent opportunity to explore the broader theme of maritime boundary zones of Nigerian vis-à-vis international maritime law. This essay argues that joint development in the spirit of a duty to cooperate within the Gulf of Guinea, will represent a Pan-African and sustainable vision, for the future exploration and exploitation of natural resources, including living resources such as Fisheries.

The Afronomicslaw.org Academic Forum invites you to join their next guest lecture series.

In my view, land reform ideas, opportunities and challenges should be informed directly by people depending on land and fighting for different social relations: rural women, rural movements, farm workers, urban land occupiers, shack dwellers, and smallholder farmers. Without listening to them, land reform will not result in just societies.

The aim of this contribution is to suggest some courses of action for Latin America and the Caribbean (hereinafter, LAC) in relation to the taxation of the digital economy. For this purpose, after a brief description of the international background on direct and indirect taxation, I refer to the state of play in the LAC region, making a few preliminary considerations and presenting some generalities on the measures that have been adopted. Finally, I will share some thoughts and recommendations.

Over the past few decades, the term ‘resource curse’ has entered the policy domain and has been used to describe how countries in Africa, and the Global South more generally, which are endowed with natural wealth, are unable to develop and cannot avoid declining into violent conflict. In the collective imaginary, wars in different African countries, such as Angola, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, and Liberia have been associated with brutal conflict waged by rebels driven by the lust for 'blood diamonds.'

Development, particularly in developing countries, in the current context requires thinking about how multiple global crises are interlinked, their impact on development prospects, and the narrative framing needed to generate positive and progressive systemic policy change.