Accountability and Transparency of Management of Natural Resources in Africa: Is the Information Sharing the Solution?

The need for governments of African countries to account to citizens for the revenues generated, especially, for natural resources endowments, as well as doing so in a transparent manner is anchored on how information is shared with citizens. This responsibility entails ensuring accountability, transparency, and information sharing since governments hold the natural resources in trust for the people of their respective countries. The chapter explores the causal dynamic relationship between natural resources and information sharing. We use total rents, forests rent, mineral rents, and depletion rent to measure natural resources and data in the form of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) in accountability of natural resources to capture information sharing. In the first part of the analysis, we employ the two-step dynamic systems GMM model to establish the empirical relationships between natural resources and information sharing over the period 2000–2020. At the combined level of natural resources, we found evidence in support of a positive relationship with information sharing. However, at the decomposed level of natural resources, we found mixed results for forest, minerals, and depletion rents. For evidence of a bi-directional relationship, we employed a probit model to examine the impact of natural resources on information sharing. The results support a two-way causal relationship for the combined natural resources and forests. The findings also thus complementary reactions between natural resources endowment and information sharing in Africa.