Program Overview
A Multi-Disciplinary Lens into Africa’s Resource Economy
This specialized training explores Africa’s extractive industries from a multi-sectoral perspective, focusing on the management, development, and sustainability of oil, gas, and mineral resources. The course combines lectures with real-world examples, integrating economics, governance, mining engineering, and legal frameworks for sustainable natural resource development.
Whether you’re in government, private sector, or civil society, this program equips you with tools to make informed decisions that promote equity, transparency, and lasting impact.
What You Will Learn
💰 Understand extractive markets, value chains & pricing
🧭 Analyze resource geopolitics & economics
⚖️ Design transparent legal & fiscal frameworks
🌱 Apply the Five Pillar Framework for sustainable extraction
🧑🤝🧑 Engage communities and protect rights
🛠️ Link extractives to national development goals
Course Modules
Introduction to the Extractive Industry
This session introduces and explains the key differences in Extractive markets, Types of hydrocarbons and minerals, value chains, and commodity prices of hydrocarbons and minerals.
Fundamentals of Extractive Industry
This session is two-fold. First, it examines the economics and geopolitics of natural resource development, which underpin the difficulties faced in resource-based development. Second, it explains the role of geology in the extractive industries. The geology of a deposit has an important influence on its potential development, including the method of extraction. The nature of these differences will be described, together with the different extraction methods and their impact on the economics of the project.
Sustainable Development and Extractive Industry
This introductory session will present the unique challenges posed by the extractive industries when it comes to sustainable development, underscoring the urgent need for practical solutions. This session will introduce Five Pillar Framework as an approach to take on the challenge of resource-based sustainable development. These pillars integrate five critical and inter-related areas of the extractive industries value-chain:
1) A Transparent and Mutually Beneficial Legal and Fiscal Framework
2) A Commitment to Long-term Planning and Revenue Management at National and Local Levels
3) A Strategy to Leverage Investments for Broad-Based Socio-Economic Development through
Infrastructure and Other Linkages
4) An Approach that Promotes Human Rights and Integrated Development
5) A System to Manage Environmental Risks and Impacts
Each of these pillars will be addressed in greater depth in sessions.
Transparency and Accountability in Extractions
Strong governance is essential for implementing any policy aimed at translating extractive industry investments into sustainable development. However, these investments are often characterized by poor governance and by corruption. There is a strong distrust between stakeholders, exacerbated by the pervasive confidentiality of extractive industry investments; the terms of the contracts and agreements are often kept confidential, as are the government’s allocation methods. Transparency – full disclosure of everything from contracts to management of revenues and environmental commitments – is crucial for realizing the sector’s economic potential, and avoiding conflict and corruption. This session will examine the institutions that can help monitor and demand transparency from the government, and national and international processes for promoting accountable management of extractive sectors.
Leveraging Extractive Industry Investments for Development
This module explains how governments beyond receiving tax and other revenues, in order to promote sustainable development, should consider how the extractive industry investments might be leveraged in infrastructure, vocational training, upstream linkages (into capital goods and consumables), and downstream linkages (into beneficiation) for national and regional development objectives.
Land Rights, Human Rights, Gender & Community Engagement
This session focuses on how extractives investments impact the land rights of populations living on or near land used for extractives projects. It covers different land rights regimes, the importance of sound land governance and tenure security, and considers how land tenure analysis can be used at different points in the development of an extractives project. This session considers the intersection of gender, land rights, human rights and community engagement in extractives, including discussion of the ways in which investments can be designed to be gender-sensitive.
Who Should Enroll
Government officers and regulators in mining/oil
Civil society & human rights advocates
Resource governance professionals
Environmental and social consultants
Extractive project managers and community officers
Become a certified leader in sustainable extractive development.
Shape the future of Africa’s natural resources with accountability and vision.