Guinea: Strengthening Civil Society Capacity in the EITI Process

In collaboration with the World Bank's Development Grant Facility, RWI provided support to the Guinea Association for Transparency (AGT) for civil society capacity building on the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI) in Guinea in 2007. AGT is an active member of the EITI Committee in Guinea as well as a founding member of the national Publish What You Pay coalition.

The project seeks to train, inform, and increase the awareness of civil society organizations to engage companies and government on EITI implementation in mining-affected communities in Guinea, and consisted of holding a national workshop in Conakry, as well as organizing trainings in eight provinces for targeted civil society participants, including unions, press, professional associations and NGOs.

Training modules for the regional workshops include informing stakeholders about the economic and social stakes of transparent extractive industry management; EITI principles, criteria and implementation information; objectives of the international and national PWYP campaign; the Document for a Poverty Reduction Strategy in Guinea; and practical modules on techniques for advocacy and information collection, management, and dissemination.

As the government of Guinea endorsed the EITI in April 2005, and the EITI Committee published its report (albeit with obvious defects) in 2006, it is crucial that civil society in Guinea Conakry be empowered to hold their government to account regarding EITI implementation and to be able to monitor and advocate the initiative’s progress. The workshops proposed are expected to do just that by equipping citizens with the knowledge, tools and communication mechanisms to proactively engage local administrations and companies on transparent use of the country's mining revenues.