By Constantine J.S. Mauki
Africa must rethink natural-resource governance by moving beyond the question of ownership to confront a more fundamental issue: who makes the decisions, who benefits from extraction, and who bears the environmental and social costs?
Africa is rich in minerals, oil, gas, gemstones, forests and other natural resources. Across the continent, these resources are routinely described as belonging to the people. Yet, for many communities living above mineral deposits or alongside oil-producing areas, the promise of collective ownership often sits uneasily with their limited influence over how those resources are managed.
Who decides where a mining licence is issued? Who determines how much a resource-producing community receives from extraction? Who has the authority to approve, monitor or stop an operation? And when environmental damage destroys livelihoods, who answers to the people affected?
These are not merely technical questions for lawyers, geologists or government administrators. They are fundamental questions of democracy, accountability, environmental justice and sustainable development.
Africa’s natural-resource debate has focused extensively on foreign investment, national ownership, taxation and revenue sharing. These issues matter. But they do not tell the whole story. We must also examine where decision-making power resides and whether the people who experience the consequences of resource extraction have a meaningful voice in determining its future.
My argument is straightforward: Africa must decentralise natural-resource governance where doing so would improve participation, effectiveness and accountability, without abandoning national oversight of strategic resources.
Ownership without influence is an incomplete promise
The distinction between owning a resource and controlling decisions about it is particularly important in Tanzania.
The country’s Constitution recognises local government authorities and their role in transferring authority to the people and involving them in development planning. However, the Mining Act places ownership and control of minerals within a national framework, with mineral rights administered under national legislation.
There is nothing inherently contradictory about a country retaining national ownership of minerals while establishing local government. Strategic resources may legitimately require national coordination.
The question, however, is whether communities and local institutions have sufficient influence over decisions that directly affect their land, livelihoods and environment.
If a community lives beside a mine but has little authority over land-use decisions, environmental monitoring or the management of local impacts, what does collective ownership mean in practice?
This is where the debate needs to move beyond constitutional declarations and legal definitions. Ownership should not be understood solely as a statement about who holds title to a resource. It should also prompt questions about representation, participation, benefits and accountability.
Citizens must be able to understand how decisions are made, identify who is responsible for them and challenge decisions that violate the law or undermine legitimate public interests.
Without these mechanisms, the idea that natural resources belong to the people risks becoming a promise that is difficult for ordinary citizens to exercise.
Communities bear the consequences of distant decisions
The environmental history of Ogoniland in Nigeria demonstrates why natural-resource governance cannot be separated from the lives of affected communities.
In its 2011 Environmental Assessment of Ogoniland, the United Nations Environment Programme documented extensive pollution associated with more than five decades of oil operations. The assessment examined more than 200 locations, surveyed 122 kilometres of pipeline rights of way, reviewed more than 5,000 medical records and engaged more than 23,000 people through community meetings.
The significance of this experience extends beyond Nigeria. It raises a question for governments across Africa: when the consequences of resource extraction are intensely local, should the institutions responsible for managing those consequences have stronger local participation and accountability?
Decentralisation alone would not necessarily have prevented the Ogoniland crisis. Nor should it be presented as a guaranteed solution to environmental degradation. Poorly governed local institutions can also fail communities.
Nevertheless, the experience illustrates why affected populations must have meaningful channels to influence decisions, access information and demand action when environmental standards are breached.
Similar questions arise in Tanzania’s mining areas. Research on Nyamongo has documented forest-resource degradation associated with mining activities, as well as displacement and loss of income among local people involved in small-scale mining.
In Mirerani, an area associated with tanzanite deposits, research on the Tanzanite Fence has examined concerns about local rights, livelihoods and access to pasture and water following measures intended to secure mineral production and increase government revenue.
These examples reveal a persistent governance challenge: the economic benefits of resource extraction may be pursued at national level, while the consequences are experienced most directly by particular communities.
National development objectives and local interests should not be treated as competing priorities that governments must simply choose between. Effective institutions should be able to reconcile them.
Revenue sharing is not the same as sharing power
One of the most important distinctions policymakers must understand is the difference between revenue decentralisation and resource decentralisation.
Revenue decentralisation concerns the distribution of income generated by natural resources to local governments and communities. Resource decentralisation concerns who has authority over aspects of resource management, licensing, economic participation and the distribution of benefits.
A district may receive a portion of resource revenue. A community may receive compensation. A mining company may fund a school, health facility or water project.
These contributions can be valuable, but they do not automatically give communities influence over the decisions that determine how extraction takes place.
Likewise, consultation does not necessarily amount to decision-making. A community may be invited to a meeting without having the authority to influence the outcome. Local officials may monitor a mining operation without being able to intervene when problems arise.
This is why I believe African governments should ask a more demanding question than how much revenue reaches resource-producing areas: what decision-making powers reach those areas, and how effectively can citizens exercise them?
The answer will vary according to the resource and the national legal framework. Not every mineral deposit, oil field or water system should be managed at the same level. Resources of strategic national importance or with cross-border implications may require central coordination.
But that should not become an automatic justification for concentrating every decision in the capital.
Where decisions are predominantly local in their consequences, local institutions should have clearly defined opportunities and responsibilities to influence their management.
Decentralisation must be accompanied by capacity
Transferring authority to local governments without providing the resources and expertise to exercise it would be a mistake.
Natural-resource governance is technically demanding. It requires knowledge of geology, environmental science, land-use planning, economics, taxation, public finance and law.
A district expected to oversee mining operations needs qualified personnel, reliable information, adequate funding and enforceable legal powers. It also needs transparent procedures for reviewing projects and monitoring their effects.
Without these foundations, decentralisation risks becoming an administrative exercise in which local authorities inherit responsibilities but lack the means to fulfil them.
Three dimensions of decentralisation therefore need to work together.
Political decentralisation establishes who has the democratic mandate to make decisions. Administrative decentralisation ensures that institutions possess the capacity to implement those decisions. Resource decentralisation defines which aspects of resource management and economic participation can appropriately be handled at regional or local level.
These dimensions cannot be separated from accountability.
Local institutions must be answerable to the people they serve. Their decisions should be subject to public scrutiny, independent audits and legal challenge. Environmental standards must remain enforceable, and citizens must have access to information about agreements and public revenues.
Decentralisation should not simply move power from national political elites to local political elites. It should distribute authority while strengthening the checks that prevent its abuse.
Women, pastoralists, migrants and other less influential groups must also be protected from exclusion. A community is not necessarily a single, unified interest group. Local power structures can be as unequal as national ones.
The objective must therefore be accountable decentralisation, not decentralisation for its own sake.
Africa already has options to learn from
Experiences across Africa suggest that greater public participation does not require governments to surrender national ownership of strategic resources.
Botswana retains national ownership of minerals while its legal framework includes provisions relating to citizen participation, environmental protection and preferences for Botswana products and citizens.
Zambia retains national control over mineral resources, while its 2022 National Mineral Resources Development Policy emphasises increased participation and ownership by Zambians across the mineral value chain.
Ghana provides another example. Recent reforms described in the source analysis give District Mining Committees a role in reviewing and recommending small-scale mining licence applications before final approval.
These approaches are not identical, nor do they establish that any single model is best for every African country. They nevertheless demonstrate that national ownership can coexist with mechanisms designed to strengthen local participation and domestic economic benefits.
Experiences in Canada and Australia similarly show that resource-related responsibilities can be distributed across different levels of government, although their constitutional arrangements and institutional histories differ significantly from those of many African countries.
African governments should learn from these experiences without assuming that imported institutional models will automatically work in their own contexts.
The task is to design systems suited to each country’s constitution, administrative capacity, resource profile and development priorities.
Subsidiarity offers a practical way forward
The principle of subsidiarity provides a useful framework for deciding which level of government should perform a particular function.
In simple terms, public responsibilities should be exercised at the level best placed to address the problem effectively and accountably.
The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs explored this principle in its 2026 Policy Brief No. 190, Making Subsidiarity Work in Practice: Engaging Subnational Authorities to Advance the 2030 Agenda. The brief emphasises the importance of clear mandates, coordination, accountability and aligning responsibilities with resources and administrative capacity.
Applied to natural-resource governance, subsidiarity does not mean that every mining licence should be issued by a district or that all mineral ownership should be transferred to regional governments.
Rather, it invites policymakers to assess each responsibility on its merits.
National governments may need to retain authority over strategic resource policy, national taxation, environmental standards and international obligations. Regional and local institutions could exercise defined responsibilities in areas such as land-use planning, local development, community engagement and aspects of environmental monitoring.
Where appropriate and legally justified, local institutions could also be given a formal role in aspects of licensing and resource management.
Such responsibilities must be established clearly in law. Informal arrangements that leave institutions uncertain about their powers can generate conflict, weaken enforcement and create opportunities for companies or political interests to exploit regulatory gaps.
The objective should be a coherent system in which every institution knows what it is responsible for, what resources it has and to whom it must answer.
Governments must regulate without monopolising every decision
A useful way to think about this reform is that government should establish and enforce the rules without necessarily monopolising every role in resource governance.
National government remains essential. It must protect the public interest, enforce environmental and safety standards, coordinate national policy and safeguard resources whose implications extend beyond local boundaries.
But it need not be the sole decision-maker on every matter relating to a resource located anywhere within the country.
Defined local responsibilities can improve the flow of information from affected communities to public institutions. They can also make it easier for citizens to identify the authorities responsible for responding to local concerns.
That potential will only be realised if independent oversight remains strong.
Auditors must be able to scrutinise revenues and expenditure. Anti-corruption institutions must investigate wrongdoing. Courts must remain accessible to people challenging unlawful decisions. Environmental authorities must be capable of enforcing standards, and civil society must be able to question decisions without being shut out of public debate.
These safeguards are essential because neither national nor local government is immune to corruption, conflicts of interest or political pressure.
The real choice is not between centralisation and decentralisation as competing ideologies. It is between governance arrangements that concentrate power with limited accountability and those that distribute responsibilities while ensuring that every level remains answerable to the public.
The question Africa must confront
Africa’s natural resources can contribute to industrialisation, employment, infrastructure development and public revenue. But these gains cannot be measured solely by export earnings, investment figures or government receipts.
They must also be assessed in terms of environmental protection, community livelihoods, public participation and the ability of citizens to hold decision-makers accountable.
The central question is not whether national governments should retain ownership of natural resources or whether local governments should take control of everything.
It is whether the distribution of decision-making authority is appropriate to the resource, the consequences of extraction and the capacity of the institutions involved.
If natural resources belong to the people, those people should have meaningful ways to influence how the resources are managed. That does not mean every community should possess an unrestricted veto over every project. It means participation, responsibilities, legal protections and avenues for redress must be clearly defined and effective.
Africa needs to move from declarations of collective ownership towards governance systems that make that ownership meaningful.
Decentralise what can be decided more effectively closer to the people. Retain nationally what genuinely requires national coordination. Strengthen accountability at every level.
The future of Africa’s natural resources will depend not only on what lies beneath its soil or how much revenue extraction generates. It will also depend on who makes the decisions, whose interests those decisions serve, who bears the costs and whether the people can demand answers.
That is the governance question Africa can no longer afford to ignore.
About the author: Constantine J.S. Mauki is a freelance socio-economic writer. This opinion article is adapted from his analysis, Who Decides Africa’s Natural Resources? Rethinking Power, Ownership and Accountability.