JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – The African Development Bank’s (AfDB’s) newly established African Natural Resources Center (ANRC) has launched an online consultation to seek comments from stakeholders on its draft strategy for 2015 to 2020, which would outline ways in which it could support effective natural resources management by governments in Africa.

The centre outlined in a statement this week that the recommendations and comments received would aid it in assisting African countries to maximise development outcomes derived from Africa’s natural resources by boosting their capacity to achieve inclusive and sustained growth from natural resources.

“This series of consultations will help the ANRC better advise African countries on natural resources management policy formulation and implementation to enable them to extract greater economic and social value from the development of natural resources,” it explained.

The establishment of the ANRC by the AfDB came in a bid to enhance African countries’ capacity to improve development outcomes through the sustainable use of renewable and nonrenewable resources.

The centre aimed to achieve this through interventions that increased the effectiveness of public and private sector governance and institutional frameworks.

It would further assist African countries to increase their economic deliverables from resources exploitation by advocating good governance, building institutional capacity, providing policy advice, offering strategic guidance and delivering technical assistance.

“The strategic objective is informed by the call by African countries for support in improving outcomes from the use of natural resources wealth and the expectation of citizens of resource-rich countries of inclusion in decision making and to benefit from the wealth.

“Africa has indeed significant renewable and nonrenewable natural resource wealth,” it held.

According to the ANRC, it is estimated that Africa’s exctractive sectors accounted for about 30% of all global minerals reserves.

Its proven oil reserves constituted 8% of the world’s reserves and those of natural gas amounted to 7%, while minerals accounted for an average of 70% of total African exports and about 28% of gross domestic product.

Those wishing to participate in the online consultation could do so by accessing the following address: http://j.mp/ANRC_Consultation.