From Reports to Results: How the Liberia Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative Makes Transparency Count

Aug 3, 2017 | Christoph Buchberger
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How do you make sure that increased transparency in the natural resource sector yields the desired results? The Liberia Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (LEITI) asked itself this question early on – and it has found two especially innovative solutions! Having joined the global transparency initiative EITI, Liberia was the first African country and the second worldwide to become compliant with the international EITI rules in 2009. The implementation rests in the hands of a national multi-stakeholder body, consisting of representatives from government, private sector and the civil society, which are supported by a secretariat. Having started as an initiative to publish and reconcile tax payments made by mining and oil companies and corresponding receipts by government, EITI soon discovered that just publishing these data was not sufficient alone. After having published the first few reports, LEITI started to tackle this issue on the level of Liberia. How could it go further to enable citizens to use the new-won transparency? How could it make sure that it translated into increased accountability – and eventually better governance of the sector? Liberia, in this case, faces a particularly tough challenge: the country is still emerging from a brutal 14-year civil conflict during the 1990ies and early 200s, which had shattered the society down to its very foundations. Generously endowed with natural resources, it nonetheless remains amongst the five poorest countries in the world – with a population which is both youthful & and lacks access to quality education.