The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative: African lessons for Australia

The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) is the most prominent of the “transparency measures” that national governments, multilateral organisations and nongovernment organisations of civil society have forged over the last decade to cope, it is said, with the excesses of private development in the resource sectors of the South. “Transparency” has to date been rather narrowly defined as the balance between the taxes paid by the extractive industries to national governments and the taxes received by those governments, an equation that ideally sums to zero, though broadened definitions are currently being pursued within and without the organisation.