Financial Transparency Coalition

Many experts have called Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania the “next frontier” of gas and oil production. In fact, these reserves have the potential to turn these nations’ economies from “mixed” to “success” stories. One large impediment to this possibility, however, is trade misinvoicing, which occurs on a massive scale. It I so serious that this problem threatens their governments’ ability to capitalize on the potential gains associated with the discovery of oil and gas. The discovery of oil in Kenya and Uganda, and gas in Tanzania has thrust each of these nations into the world’s energy spotlight. In 2006 Uganda...

If you’re not one of the 112 million people to have already watched Jason Russell's Kony 2012 video on YouTube, you might be inclined to tune in here first. Kony 2012 is part-documentary, part-over-produced-Hollywood-flick that has engendered an enormous amount of attention and emotion on Facebook, Twitter, and blogs. It concerns Joseph Kony, a warlord from Uganda who, with the help of his forces, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), has abducted and enslaved tens of thousands of children in his own country, as well as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan, and the Central African Republic. He remains...

Compared to some of the countries in the neighborhood, Uganda is doing pretty well. Directly to the West lies the Democratic Republic of the Congo, ranked by Foreign Policy as the world’s fourth most failed state. With a per capita GDP of $189, it is one of the poorest nations in the world. In the last ten years, it has fallen into near chaos, with many areas lacking law, order, electricity, and medicine. Directly to the North of Uganda lies South Sudan, the world’s newest nation, which despite outward promises remains in a fearsome political deadlock with its northern...

This post is the second part of a two-post series. The first post, on the economic costs of Section 1504, is available here. Embedded into the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act–also known as the “financial overhaul bill”—was Section 1504, which will require companies listed on the U.S. stock exchange to disclose payments to governments for oil, gas, and mining. The American Petroleum Industry (API), a U.S. trade association for the oil and gas industry, is pushing back against this provision. In a letter to the SEC, API claims Section 1504 defies Executive Order 13563, which Obama signed...