Expanding EITI in Southern Africa – Southern Africa Resource Watch
In 2007 RWI provided support to Open Society Institute-Southern Africa's new Southern Africa Resource Watch (SARW) program, an effort to monitor corporate and state conduct in the extraction and management of natural resources in the Southern Africa region, in particular assessing to what extent these efforts contribute to sustainable development. SARW conducted a mapping and needs assessment for Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI) outreach and implementation in nine SADC countries: Angola, Botswana, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
In these countries, SARW interviewed government officials, parliamentarians, civil society groups, and foreign and national companies. Through research on each country's perceptions of the EITI; EITI conferences in each country and reports on the status of EITI in each country, the project was intended to collect and analyze information regarding perceptions about EITI in the region; tackle negative perceptions about the EITI which prevent governments from joining and implement it; contribute to improving the region's understanding of the EITI and its benefits; provide first hand information on EITI to governments in the region, including how it operates, how to sign up and the support they should expect to receive; determine more effective and positive ways of how South Africa's engagement with the rest of the region could be improved through the EITI; and support the DRC in implementing the EITI.
The project was just one component of a larger extractive industry research program that SARW had been developing in collaboration with OSISA and RWI. It served as a feasibility study for engaging Southern African governments and civil society in the EITI by directly addressing each country's perceptions and concerns as well as setting a positive environment around which RWI and SARW could develop more expansive projects to build the capacity and interest of local civil society groups.
RWI continues to collaborate with SARW on a country-by-country basis. For more information on the activities of SARW, please see www.sarwatch.org/.
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Financial Summary
Revenue Watch and our partners engage in increasingly diverse forms of public finance monitoring, including service delivery, participatory budgeting, and aid and expenditure tracking. Our partners are coalescing into an indigenous-led network of non-governmental organizations at the forefront of the battle against corruption and abuse of the public interest.
RWI takes a comprehensive approach to improving governance and development across the entire value chain, from the organization of extractive production, revenue generation, and revenue management, and through to the expenditure processes and national development outcomes.