Abstract

The paper offers guidance on understanding and delivering local content in relation to the extractive industries, with a particular focus on the mining sector. It aims to offer the mining developers practical advice on how they can realise the potential value of local content and to offer all stakeholders suggestions on the ways to aid create shared value via local content development. Since local content frameworks require investors to meet certain social investment targets amidst trade-offs. As the local community where the exploitation is taking place do often benefit in terms of job creation, local business development, capacity building and technology transfer. Thus, as the mine is opened in the community, the members of the community immediately expect benefits from employment opportunities at the mine and be able to sell their goods and services to the mine. Despite these, some challenges still exist like the nature of the goods and services offered by the community, which can lead to conflicts if not properly managed, especially where there are lapses in legislation. Although as seen in the case of Cameroon, where the lapses in local content legislation, have enabled the mining companies to take a range of approaches to local content, from strategic to opportunistic, though with varying degrees of success. In this vein, the paper proffers the policymakers and other viable stakeholders in the mining sector to brainstorm and adopt specific legislation on local content, and establish a national agency of local content, as the first step towards operationalizing local content, as a sustainable and alternative strategy to avoid the resource curse dilemma in Cameroon. As such, although the recommendations as they stand can be taken up by stakeholders individually – though to achieve the full potential of local content development, a more cohesive and strategic approach is warranted, where a stakeholder forum is held constantly, whereby the stakeholders can debate and discuss the issues, challenges and opportunities, and hopefully come to a collective decision as to how best to proceed in a strategic and industry wide manner. Likewise, scholars from academia, civil society organisations, and other research institutions will find the research outputs a valuable addition to their current knowledge of the mining sector and an impetus to conduct more research on the local content agenda.

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