Post #395

Cargo Cult in Gabon🇬🇦 🌐 Inspired by the examples of Ghana and Mali, Gabon announces its own audit of the mining sector. 💪 The plans are ambitious: to make public all existing mining agreements in full and to conduct a comprehensive audit of contracts signed between 2010 and 2024. 📉 But unlike Mali, which has already carried out a similar review and recovered foregone revenues from mining companies, and Ghana, which is only planning to audit its mining sector in 2026, Gabon is unlikely to gain anything substantial from these efforts. ⏩ First, the main goal is not to put the house in order or provide transparency to the citizens, but to please the IMF, with which Gabon is negotiating possible financial support. ⏩ Second, although Gabon produces large volumes of manganese, mining accounts for only about 7% of extractive-sector revenues. The state earns most from oil, yet for some reason the government is in no hurry to make all oil agreements public. ⏩ In the end, this looks less like an audit and more like a fiction: examining a tiny sector, and not even for the sake of fairness, but to win the IMF’s favor. It is clear that the usefulness of such an exercise will be about the same as that of a makeshift wooden cargo plane. ➡️ Follow to stay informed - @devilsbelow