The reality that abundant natural resources do not automatically translate into benefi ts to economies and citizens of countries where natural resources are mined has been recently appreciated by countries across the globe. To redress the situation, most resource-rich countries have embraced resource-nationalist legal frameworks to enhance the maximization of public economic rents and strategic public ownership and facilitate developmental spill overs to local economies.
The need to increase local participation in the extractive sector has promulgated local content (LC) policies in most resource-rich countries, including Tanzania. LC policies aim to regulate the extractive industry to provide greater ownership to the state and local fi rms through local fi rms accessing various value chains and capturing more signifi cant economic rents. Chief among others, one way to maximize local take is through increasing local participation in acquiring employment, training, having domestic benefi ciation and obtaining contracts to supply goods and services to the sector.
Since, LC policies are necessary but not guaranteed success, Policy Forum commissioned this study to explore the management of local content policies in the extractive sector with a view to examining whether it is delivering as expected. In that case, Shinyanga and Geita regions were sampled for analysis concerning the mining sector. On the other hand, unlike the mining sector, the oil and gas subsector has not been fully developed. The Dar Es Salaam region has thus been sampled as it is the headquarters the of Oil and Gas company responsible for the East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline (HoimaTanga pipeline) and many other prospective contractors