The Joaquim Chissano University (UJC) professor and researcher, Calton Cadeado, defends a greater dissemination of information about the extractive industry in the Mozambican communities as a way to prevent conflicts.
According to Calton Cadeado, who was speaking this Thursday (29), in Maputo, on the second and final day of the conference on Governance of Extractive Resources and Conflict Prevention, transparency has a lot to do with access to information and accountability. Therefore, “when people are not properly informed they can easily rebel”.
The academic argued for the need for the use of accessible language to ensure that information is assimilated by communities. “Communities complain about technical information because they are not prepared to understand it,” he stressed.
The source further suggested that the different actors (Government, companies and civil society organisations) favour contact with the community, looking at information, communication and accountability, in order to reduce the distance between communities and actors and thus ensure transparency.
The representative of the Centre for Public Integrity (CIP), a Mozambican non-governmental organisation, Rui Mate, said that some companies do not facilitate access to information, as their websites contain information in English, which may compromise transparency.
“Although Mozambique has been recently recognized as the third country in the world that complies with the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI), there is still much to be done such as disclosure of the effective beneficiaries, systematic publication of data in open format, favouring the local content”, he said.
The conference was held under the theme: Opportunities and Challenges for an Inclusive and Peaceful Management of Resources in Mozambique.
