More transparent company ownership will help end
the cycle of collusion and corruption involving foreign companies
operating in Africa
GENEVA, Switzerland, October 31 - The Africa Progress Panel welcomes
today’s announcement by UK Prime Minister David Cameron that a central
register of company ownership, announced at the G8, will be public. This
is a great step towards more transparent ownership of companies and
will have positive consequences for African nations.As our Panel Chair, former UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, noted in this year’s Africa Progress Report, non-transparent company ownership too often facilitates the concealment of morally questionable transactions involving foreign companies. These transactions include illegal payments and tax-avoiding revenue streams. Our report, “Equity in Extractives – Stewarding Africa’s natural resources for all”, highlighted five deals in the Democratic of the Republic of the Congo, which together cost the country an estimated US$1.36 billion, through the systematic undervaluation and sale of state-owned mining assets to anonymous offshore companies. This is an amount equal to twice the combined annual health and education budgets.
Multilateral action to regulate the activities of foreign companies is critical. Prime Minister Cameron’s announcement at the Open Government Partnership meeting today moves the world closer towards correcting a major injustice.
The Panel notes the potential complexities and challenges of implementation, and the need to include trusts in the public registry, but commends British Prime Minister David Cameron for his leadership. The Panel hopes – and expects – this UK example will be followed by Britain’s overseas territories, crown dependencies, and G8 partners such as the United States and Germany. This could have major benefits for Africa’s resource rich countries, whose people have not benefitted enough from the mineral wealth beneath their soils and waters.
