UPDATE: On AFRODAD’s Facebook page, the announcement was made at 5.45pm that the Vice President of Malawi Hon. Khumbo Kachili (instead of the President) will open the International Conference on Transparency and Responsible Finance.

On Thursday and Friday this week (6 and 7 December 2012), the Malawi Economic Justice Network (MEJN) and the African Forum and Network on Debt and Development (AFRODAD) will hold an international two-day conference in collaboration with European Network on Debt and Development (EURODAD) and Red Latinoamericana de Deuda, Desarrollo y Derechos (LATINDADD) on transparency and responsible financing in the extractive industry. Malawi’s president Joyce Banda is set to the open the event at the Sogecoa Golden Peacock Hotel in Lilongwe.

The aim of the meeting, “Experiences on Revenues: The Role of Parliamentarians and Civil Society in Transparency and Responsible Finance in the Extractive Sector”, is to

[...] bring together parliamentarians, civil society organisations, media, regional bodies, and other stakeholders working on extractives from Africa, Latin America and Europe as well as regional parliamentarians for instance, SADC Parliamentary Forum, East African Parliament and Ecowas parliament of Africa, the European Parliament and the Andean Parliament and the Mercosur Parliament from Latin America.

The objectives of the conference are threefold:

1. To  promote  dialogue  among  parliamentarians  from
Africa, Latin America and Europe and the respective Civil
Society on illicit capital flight.
2. To provide space for Parliamentarians to identify, discuss
and find solutions to the challenges facing the mining
sector, as well as the challenges faced by
parliamentarians and decision  makers  regarding
formulation,  ratification  and  oversight  of  mining
legislation/policies and binding responsible financing
standards.
3. To generate discussions on strategies to be adopted by
national  governments  to  help  address  issues  of  illicit
financial flows from the extractives sector. The discussion
will be based on experiences of what is working and not
working for other countries

We will blog about this meeting over the next few days.

For further information, take a look at the conference publication available at AFRODAD.