Guinea: Strengthening Civil Society Capacity in the EITI Process

In collaboration with the World Bank's Development Grant Facility, RWI has provided support to Guinea Association for Transparency (AGT) for civil society capacity building on EITI in Guinea. AGT is an active member of the EITI Committee in Guinea as well as a founding member of the national PWYP coalition. The project seeks to train, inform, and increase the awareness of CSOs to engage companies and government on EITI implementation in mining affected communities in Guinea, and consists of holding a national workshop in Conakry, as well as organizing trainings in each prefecture for targeted CSO participants (including unions and press). As the government of Guinea endorsed the EITI in April 2005 and in 2006 the EITI Committee published its report (albeit with obvious defects), it is crucial that civil society in Guinea Conakry be empowered to hold their government to account for its endorsement of EITI and be able to monitor and advocate progressive implementation of the initiative. The workshops proposed are expected to do just that by equipping citizens with the knowledge, tools and communication mechanisms to proactively engage the local administrations and companies on transparent use of the country's mining revenues; and AGT will work in close cooperation with other local RWI partners such as CENAFOD to coordinate such activities.