Africa's oil, gas and mineral exploration and exploitation deals will be on the spotlight during a meeting of legal experts kicking off in Arusha this evening. (Monday).
The conference, expected to attract over 300 lawyers from within Africa and beyond, will deliberate on how the continent can gain from negotiations for extraction of such resources.
"This will be in an attempt to increase the capacity of African lawyers to negotiate good deals for our governments and people", said Donald Deya, the CEO of Pan African Lawyers' Union (Palu).
African states, he said, are losing millions of dollars in tax revenues from the oil, gas and mineral projects because their lawyers lacked capacity in the negotiations.
"We are often short-changed (in revenue gains) for engaging the foreign law firms in crafting the mining or oil drilling contracts instead of our legal experts", he told this blog.
Palu, a premier continental forum for lawyers and lawyers' associations, is organizing the forum in collaboration with a host of collaborators from within the region and others.
They include the Tanganyika Law Society (TLS), Zanzibar Law Society (ZLS), the East African Law Society (EALS) and bar associations from the UK, India, Germany and the Caribbean.
In recent years, there has been a rising concern over how African countries are short-changed in oil, gas and mineral deals by the multinational corporations.
The continent, the Bank of Tanzania (BoT) said last week, was also losing about $ 350million annually for illicit transfer of money from the continent to the tax heavens abroad.
The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad), on the other hand,says illicit financial flows out of Africa amounted to $836 billion from 2000 to 2015.
A recent Unctad report for 2021 says Africa was losing revenues in illicit financial flows because the multinational corporations, in particular, were not declaring how much they were getting from mineral or oil and gas exploration.
Mr. Deya cited the recent Barrick Gold saga in Tanzania, describing it as a best example of illicit money flows from an African country out of many others where multinational corporations are active.
"In such cases they over-inflate inputs and under-declare the inputs. The cost of inputs is often very high. At the end of the day, they don't declare the true amount and value of gold", he pointed out.
Mr. Deya said the conference at Mt. Meru Hotel is expected to call for a speedy resolution of commercial disputes among business entities in Africa to go beyond just litigation.
"Medication of business disputes will save time and money. Courts should be advised to facilitate mediation", he said, noting that this was an alternative paradigm in justice dispensation.
There will also be sessions on investments in real estate development and shipping in Africa as well as legal aspects on implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement
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