Review Paper
Year: 2023 | Month: August | Volume: 10 | Issue: 8 | Pages: 264-294
DOI: https://doi.org/10.52403/ijrr.20230835
Exploring the Local Content Paradigm in Hydrocarbon Resources-Rich Countries to Unravel the Emerging Challenges and Way Forward for Cameroon as a Neophyte
Bande Gulbert Mbah Tarh
PhD in Law, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Law and Political Science, University of Maroua, Cameroon,
ABSTRACT
Local content in hydrocarbon resource-rich countries has become a panacea for the host governments and other key stakeholders in the extractive industries. As such, more resource-rich developing countries like Cameroon, are trying hard to put in place viable local content frameworks (LCFs), to maximise their benefits from the industries. Despite this, it is noted that such LCFs are often implemented without sufficient research into their efficacy, thus, yielding mixed results. In this sense, the paper examines the impact of LCFs in the hydrocarbon sector, to gain insight into the impending challenges faced by the key players involved in their implementation. Equally, the channels through which LCFs are advancing value creation are traced, by evaluating the different implementation programmes, using clearly stated local content targets to measure efficacy, and assessing the diversity of local content strategies for countries at different developmental stages. To provide the Government of Cameroon, the international oil companies (IOCs), and the domestic suppliers, with some guides on how to successfully develop and implement a LCF. Since the experiences of the countries reviewed in the paper show that the success or otherwise of LCFs remains a function of a country’s institutional setting and developmental paradigm. As such, a successful LCF needs to be anchored on the fact that LCFs need to look beyond the simple generation of economic benefits to focus on the development of linkages. In this regard, the paper accentuates that as IOCs play a key role in the management of natural resources in most African countries. On this basis, the paper seeks to motivate Cameroonian policymakers and practitioners in the hydrocarbon sector to include specific legislation, policy, and model contracts on local content, as a first step towards operationalizing and institutionalising the LCF, as a sustainable and alternative strategy to avoid the resource curse dilemma. Likewise, scholars and other research institutions will find the research outputs as a valuable addition to the current knowledge on the hydrocarbon sector, therefore, an impetus to conduct more research on local content in the sector.
Keywords: Exploring, Local Content Paradigm, Hydrocarbon Sector, Emerging Challenges, Way Forward, Cameroon
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