Nikolai Astrup, the new Norwegian Minister for Development, was speaking at a reception to mark the 39th EITI Board meeting. He started by quoting part of a powerful speech delivered at Davos by Erna Solberg, Norway’s prime minister:
“Corruption and illegal financial flows are linked to the whole range of security threats we face today: climate change, terror, organised crime, cybercrime, to mention a few. We face multiple challenges, not limited by national borders.
Photo: Head of Papua New Guinea EITI Mr Lucas Alkan (right) being presented a gift by the leader of a civil society organisation in East Sepik Province after completion of an EITI Awareness Roadshow in the capital, Wewak in November last year.
Before Papua New Guinea signed up to implement the EITI Standard in 2013, there was no framework in place for disclosure of revenue streams from the country’s mining and petroleum sector.
First impressions from an assessment of Afghanistan progress against the EITI Standard
Legend says that sometime around 2000 BC, an oracle decreed that the next man to enter the city of Telmissus would become king of the Phrygians. Gordias, a farmer riding on an ox-cart, drove into the city and was summarily made king. Decades later, his son, the famous King Midas, commemorated this event by tying the cart to a pole in the town square with a devilishly intricate knot. According to prophesy,
“Working on corruption and illegal financial flows is vital to reach the global goals in the future.”
- Erna Solberg at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos
The EITI International Secretariat’s headquarters are located in Oslo because many people consider Norway a global leader on governance of the extractive industries. The Prime Minister of Norway, the world’s richest (per capita) oil producing country, Erna Solberg,
Cari Votava is a Senior Financial Sector Specialist with the World Bank Group, focusing on financial market integrity. Cari participated in EITI's conference on Beneficial Ownership in Jakarta, Indonesia, as both a moderator and a speaker, and EITI commissioned this blog post on beneficial ownership in the extractives sector. The views expressed in this blog are her own.
One on one with Ayodeji Olowoporoku, winner of the Executive Secretary Annual Award for Exceptional Contributions, Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative
Please give us a little bit of background of yourself; tell us who you are and why you are interested in extractives governance in Nigeria?
My name is Ayodeji Olowoporoku. I am a Policy Analyst at the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), and I have worked here since 2010. As an undergraduate,
2017 has been a busy year for our countries. Almost half have completed Validation, we have seen unparalleled political commitments on beneficial ownership transparency and most are accelerating the process of mainstreaming transparency into government and company systems.
We welcomed three countries to our family in 2017 – Guyana, Mexico and Suriname. We also saw three countries withdraw from EITI implementation, Azerbaijan, Niger and the United States.
Region faces tricky implementation challenges, but overall there are reasons to be cheerful.
In the past month, I have met with all 24 African EITI implementing countries. 10 Anglophone and Lusophone countries in Lusaka, 13 Francophone countries in Yaoundé, and Tanzania. I have also been to Ghana (with our Chair, Fredrik Reinfeldt), Mozambique and Sierra Leone. Colleagues have been on a Validation mission to Madagascar and pre-Validation mission to Ethiopia.
2017 was a busy year in the EITI world. In total, 217 articles were published including blog and news items. We also held three Board meetings, a global beneficial ownership conference, another "-papers"-leak, and over 20 Validations have generated a lot of traffic to our website. We have had almost 800,000 page views this year, and over 140 000 users. The Standard was downloaded 3,181 times this year,
Kazakhstan has implemented the EITI for ten years, and is seen as a flagship for natural resource transparency in the region. EITI reports have significantly enhanced information in the extractive sector, disclosing disaggregated revenue data and data on social investments, local content, production, exports, etc. Most of this information was not available to the public before.