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African governments have been asked to build a resolute transparent regime for the licensing of oil concessions to avoid corruption.

They have also been urged to adopt an open and competitive bidding process, mandatory disclosure of contracts, disclosure of beneficial ownership information and provision of anticorruption clauses that penalizes companies involved in corrupt practices.

A communiqué read by Mr Benjamin Boakye, Deputy Executive Director of African Centre for Economic policy and issued at the end of the maiden Africa oil Governance summit said.

The summit was on the theme: “Africa rising as oil curse beckons for most countries, is good governance the missing link between oil wealth and development”.

The summit brought together participants from governments, industry and civil societies, across Africa and highlighted governance challenges faced by oil producing countries in Africa and to drive consensus to manage the challenges.

It urged African governments to optimize the benefits from oil and gas exploration through a combination of fiscal and non-fiscal reforms by stopping unnecessary tax concessions, and maximize local content initiatives.

“African governments must develop a comprehensive resource revenue management framework, extensive disclosure requirements and productive investment choices based on long term national development and public investment plan,” the statement said.

The communiqué urged African governments to develop regional protocol linked to the African Mining Vision, for addressing common tax issues, cross border resource management, conflict and regional infrastructure issues.

It urged Africa governments to demonstrate commitment to building independent and well-resourced institutions for efficient tax administration, contract negotiation and execution, mitigation of adverse environmental impacts and effective parliamentary oversight.

The communiqué urged oil companies to negotiate and implement community based agreement in consultation with communities to support community development, protect their rights and ensure environmental sustainability.

The statement urged African leaders to take urgent steps to domesticate the recommendations by developing clear and jointly owned advocacy action plans to sustain the momentum generated by the summit.