A model for sharing mineral resource rent in African countries

The debate on the sharing of mineral resource rent between governments and investors is recurrent. It resurfaces especially when the prices of minerals increase. The question is an important one for African countries, more than half of which produce mineral resources. However, there are no public databases to analyse and compare the fiscal and parafiscal tools put in place by African governments in order to capture a ‘fair’ portion of mineral resource rent. Initiatives to increase the transparency of information on mineral resource rent sharing focus mainly on the oil and gold sectors. These initiatives use different methods (mainly discounted cash flow models and modern asset pricing models) with different assumptions regarding discount rates, sales prices, etc.