IMF

the responsibility to build a nation rests upon its policy-makers, lawyers and accountants. It is a collective one. The next step is to bring all stakeholders to the round-table and contribute to the global tax system from a protectionist standpoint. The lure of subscribing to the global fiscal commons must be tempered with the need to protect the tax bases and revenue of the fiscal sovereign. The time to act is now and right.

Over the last decade, and especially in the mining sector, African state actors have begun to denounce unequal mining contracts, and are increasingly reviewing mining contracts accordingly. While African host states are seemingly taking it upon themselves to remedy real and perceived imbalances vis-à-vis investors in their mining contracts, a key question remains what structural reasons have led to such imbalances in the first place, and whose responsibility it is to address these structural issues: host states, investors, home states, international financial institutions, or all the above? This brief discussion contextualizes how responsibilities to redress unequal mining contracts may be shared.