• Stakeholder involvement

Citizen participation and stakeholder involvement

This report examines how local resource rights can be secured within the context of foreign investment projects in Africa. Taking foreign investment flows as a given, the report explores ways in which benefits for the local population can be maximised and costs minimised.

It develops a conceptual framework  defining key concepts such as legal empowerment, analysing power relations in foreign investment projects, and comparing the protection of natural resource rights for foreign investors and for local resource users.

The report also analyses the legal tools that have been used in several African countries to secure the resource rights of local groups affected by foreign investment projects, and to address power asymmetries between local resource users and foreign investors.

Tools include:

• vesting greater resource rights with local groups (e.g. through community land registration or decentralisation)
•  tightening requirements for minimising and compensating negative impacts on local resource rights (e.g. through more demanding rules on compensation for taking or damage to property)
• strengthening local consultation and benefit-sharing requirements.

The report is in particular of interest to development lawyers, development practitioners working at a macro-planning level, and researchers. It sets out the case for taking law seriously as a tool for empowerment and positive change; it argues that designing and implementing legal tools that deliver positive change depend not only on sound legal thinking, but also on tackling power relations and other social, cultural, political and economic factors that affect the way the law operates in practice.

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