Oil & Gas summer school opens at GIMPA

By Bernard Yaw Ashiadey

The Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration has opened a summer school featuring governance of oil, gas and mining revenues at its Africa Regional Extractives Industries Knowledge Hub in Accra.

The two-week course seeks to strengthen, equip and empower participants to effectively exercise their oversight roles over the prudent management of extractive industry revenue by governments.

The Executive Director, Centre for Energy Economics and Policy (CEEP), Mr. Mohammed Amin Adam, in an address at the opening recounted the numerous problems facing the continent’s management of natural resources.

He pointed out that African governments instead of investing resource revenues in productive areas --and thus diversifying the economy to withstand post-resource economic difficulties -- prefer to spend on consumption.

He noted even though natural resources are non-renewable and their prices volatile on the world market, countries embark on excessive and uncontrolled spending; and sometimes resort to debt accumulation against their finite resources in what is commonly referred to as ‘collateralisation’.

“The depletion stage of natural resources further results in declining revenues, which account for postponement of vital projects, high debt servicing and its concomitant interest accumulation; and almost always creates unplanned fiscal deficits and increased indebtedness to finance the deficits, and weakens the international reserve position in the process,” he added.

The summer school, he said, therefore offers significant opportunity for African professionals and activists to share ideas on the common goal of promoting sustainable management of the continent’s abundant natural resources.

Mr. John Peter Amewu, Course Convener, said the course brings participants from across Africa together to improve their knowledge and educate them on how to manage natural resources to create wealth for their countries.

“The school will be used to create deeper understanding of the issues and challenges in the extractive industry in the region, and use the insights to improve upon the existing frameworks in the sub-region,” he said.

The summer school brings together local government officials, parliamentarians, media personnel, traditional authorities and personnel from civil society organisations working in the extractive sector drawn from Tanzania, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Liberia, Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Ghana.

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