Parliamentary Oversight of Extractive Industries

Africa has experienced a boom in extractive industries since the beginning of this century. Extractive companies often are exposed not just to government patronage, but also to requests co consider local third-party agents, vendors or applications for employment. But is corruption a necessary evil? While there is conscensus that multi-faceted strategies are required to curb corruption, hietherto, there has been little research on how Parliamentary oversight can help reduce corruption in general and on Parliamentary oversight in the extractive industry in particular. This chapter presents a review of Parliamentary oversight of extractive industry in two African countries:- Ghana and Tanzania.