What Do We Know about Mineral Resource Rent Sharing in Africa?

taxation; mineral tax; resource rent tax; developing countries.Governments that lack the capacity to mine resources themselves have to attract foreign direct investment. However, since resources are not renewable countries need to capture a ‘fair’ share of mineral resource rent to promote their development. While the sharp rise of the world prices of most minerals (in particular, gold, copper, iron and bauxite) multiplied the global turnover of the mining sector by 4.6 between 2002 and 2010, tax revenue earned by African governments from the non-renewable natural resource sector only grew by a factor of 1.15 (Mansour 2014). The sharing of mineral resource rent between governments and investors is often criticised for being unfavourable to African governments. But what do we really know about the sharing of mineral resource rent in Africa? The aim of this study is to review theoretical and empirical studies on rent sharing in Africa, and to note their limitations regarding knowledge of the actual sharing of mineral rent.DfID, NORA

Multiscale modelling of the respiratory tract

International audienceWe propose here a decomposition of the respiratory tree into three stages which correspond to different mechanical models. The resulting system is described by the Navier-Stokes equation coupled with an ODE (a simple spring model) representing the motion of the thoracic cage. We prove that this problem has at least one solution locally in time for any data and, in the special case where the spring stiffness is equal to zero, we obtain an existence result globally in time provided that the data are small enough. The behaviour of the global model is illustrated by three-dimensional simulations

La fiscalité minière en Afrique : un état des lieux du secteur de l’or dans 14 pays de 1980 à 2015

The lack of information about the mining resource rent sharing between governments and investors is an easy statement in Africa. Existing public databases are often insufficient for a deep analysis of the African tax law applied to natural resource sectors, which limits the academic and operational work. The FERDI publishes the first tax and legal database which specifies the tax regime applied to industrial gold mining companies in 14 African countries from the 1980s to 2015. The database featuring three major innovations: (i) an inventory of taxes and duties (rate, base and exemptions) payable during the prospecting phase and mining phase of a gold mining project; (ii) an entirely new level of historical depth; (iii) the link between each piece of tax information and its legal source. This database is used to make a first analysis of tax regimes and rent sharing in gold producer countries. The first results emphasize heterogeneity of tax regimes between English-speaking and French-speaking countries with a convergence of the average effective tax rates that increase in most countries following the tax reforms undertaken since 2010

L’affaire des Chartrons : une « semi-empoisonneuse » bordelaise à la Belle Époque

Au milieu de l’effervescence du quartier des Chartrons, cœur économique de Bordeaux, est commis un empoisonnement qui va marquer non seulement la ville et ses habitants mais aussi le jeune François Mauriac qui s’inspirera de l’accusée, Henriette Canaby, pour décrire Thérèse Desqueyroux. La forte identité du quartier, l’attitude de la victime, les prises de position des journalistes contribuent à donner à ce fait divers un caractère exceptionnel. Tandis que la rumeur s’empare de cette affaire et influence l’enquête menée par le médecin de famille, la presse locale s’en saisit dès l’ouverture de l’instruction, en juin 1905. Quant aux journalistes de la presse parisienne et spécialisée, ils rendent compte du procès en insitant sur la perplexité des magistrats, des journalistes, des experts et de l’opinion publique.Amid the effervescence Chartrons district, economic heart of Bordeaux, is committed poisoning, which will mark not only the city and its inhabitants but also the young Francois Mauriac drawing of the suspect, Henriette Canaby, to write his novel entitled Thérèse Desqueyroux. The corporatist aspect of this district affects what is diverse and gives it special. Under suspicious circumstances, the rumour seized of this matter quickly and influence the investigation by the family doctor. Local press the recounts in minute detail at the outset of the investigation, in June 1905, until the trial, in late May 1906.As for the Parisian press and specialized, they reflect the trial. Their articles highlight the perplexity of judges, journalists, experts and the public face up to this crime

La fiscalité minière en Afrique : quelle évolution récente en 2018 ?

The extractive sector is of primary importance to African states. Of the 54 countries on the continent, 20 are considered by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to be rich in natural resources. These are countries whose natural resources account for more than 25 per cent of total exports. All are sub-Saharan African countries: seven export mainly oil and gas, and 13 export mainly minerals: mostly gold, diamonds and precious stones. The significant weight of the extractive sector in these states raises the question of the taxation of these natural resources, which are non-renewable. An innovative database on the taxation of mining industries in Africa has been put online on the Ferdi website, in partnership with Cerdi and ICTD. This database covers 21 sub-Saharan African countries over a period that varies according to the availability of information in each country but can go back to the 1980s. It was created based on the tax legislation and regulations of each country, essentially the income tax acts, finance acts and mining acts. It separates the general regime (applicable to all companies) from the mining regime (applicable only to holders of mineral rights for prospecting or exploitation on an industrial scale). It focuses on a single ore: gold.Le secteur extractif est de première importance pour les Etats africains. Sur les 54 pays que compte le continent, 20 sont considérés comme riches en ressources naturelles par le Fonds Monétaire International (FMI)1. Il s’agit des pays dont les ressources naturelles représentent plus de 25% des exportations totales. Tous sont des pays d’Afrique sub-saharienne : 7 exportent principalement du pétrole et du gaz, 13 exportent principalement des minerais : surtout de l’or, des diamants et des pierres précieuses. Le poids conséquent du secteur extractif dans ces Etats pose la question de la taxation de ces ressources naturelles qui sont non-renouvelables. Une base de données inédite sur la fiscalité des industries minières en Afrique a été mise en ligne sur le site de la Ferdi, en partenariat avec le Cerdi et l’ICTD. Cette base de données couvre 21 pays d’Afrique sub-saharienne sur une période qui varie selon la disponibilité de l’information dans chaque pays mais peut remonter jusque dans les années 1980. Elle a été constituée à partir de la législation et de la réglementation fiscale de chaque pays, essentiellement les codes généraux des impôts, les lois de finances, les codes miniers et leurs textes d’application. Elle distingue le régime général (applicable à toutes les entreprises) du régime minier (applicable aux seuls titulaires de titres miniers de recherche ou d’exploitation à l’échelle industrielle). Elle se concentre sur un seul minerai : l’or

Numerical method for the 2D simulation of the respiration

International audienceIn this article we are interested in the simulation of the air flow in the bronchial tree. The model we use has already been described by Baffico, Grandmont and Maury and is based on a three part description of the respiratory tract. This model leads, after time discretization, to a Stokes system with non standard dissipative boundary conditions that cannot be easily and directly implemented in most FEM software, in particular in FreeFEM++. The objective is here to provide a new numerical method that could be implemented in any softwares. After describing the method, we illustrate it by two-dimensional simulations

Multiscale modelling of the respiratory track : a theoretical framework

International audienceWe propose here a decomposition of the respiratory tree into three stages which correspond to different mechanical models. The resulting system is described by the Navier-Stokes equation coupled with an ODE (a simple spring model) representing the motion of the diaphragm muscl. We prove that this problem has at least one solution locally in time for any data and, in the special case where the external forces are equal to zero and if the initial conditions are small enough, that the solution exists globally in time. Note moreover that, in the case where the spring stiffness is equal to zero, we obtain an existence result globally in time provided, once again, that the data are small enough. The behaviour of the global model is illustrated by two-dimensional simulations

Performance on an Everyday Life Activity in Persons Diagnosed with Alcohol Dependency Compared to Healthy Controls: Relations between a Computerized Shopping Task and Cognitive and Clinical Variables†

Aim: Persons diagnosed with alcohol dependency often suffer from cognitive impairments. Little is known, however, concerning how these cognitive deficits impact complex, everyday life activities. We set out to better characterize the nature of everyday life difficulties in patients with alcohol dependency using a computerized shopping task. Methods: A computerized real-life activity task (shopping task) required participants to shop for a list of eight grocery store items. Twenty individuals diagnosed with alcohol dependency and 20 healthy controls were administered a battery of cognitive tests, clinical scales and the shopping task. Results: Performance on the shopping task significantly differentiated patients and healthy controls for several variables and, in particular, for total time. Total time to complete the task correlated significantly with poor performance on measures of processing speed, verbal episodic memory, cognitive flexibility and inhibition. Total time was significantly correlated with poorer everyday life functioning and longer duration of illness. Conclusion: This computerized task is a good proxy measure of the level of everyday life and cognitive functioning of persons diagnosed with alcohol dependenc