A Feminist Approach to Tax and Economic Justice in Africa’s Extractives Sector
Background
Africa’s extractives sector is expanding rapidly, driven by the global demand for critical minerals essential to the energy transition. While this growth presents significant economic opportunities, it continues to reproduce deep structural inequalities—particularly for women. Across mining, oil, and gas value chains, women experience disproportionate social, environmental, and economic costs while remaining largely excluded from benefits such as formal employment, revenue sharing, and decision-making spaces.
Conventional tax regimes, investment frameworks, and fiscal policies remain largely gender-blind, failing to account for women’s unpaid care work, informal economic participation, and heightened exposure to extractive-related harms. At the same time, illicit financial flows (IFFs), regressive tax incentives, and rising public debt significantly reduce the fiscal space required to invest in gender-responsive public services.
Against this backdrop, the webinar “A Feminist Approach to Tax and Economic Justice in Africa’s Extractives Sector” was convened to advance a transformative conversation on how fiscal governance, taxation, and economic policy can better serve women and promote equitable development outcomes.
The webinar was held in the context of the International Day for Women in Mining (IDWIM) 2025, under the global theme “Voices of Impact: A Year of Resilience and Recognition”, reinforcing the urgency of recognizing women’s contributions and addressing systemic injustice within the extractives sector.
Purpose of the Webinar
The webinar aimed to foster shared understanding and catalyze action towards gender-transformative tax and economic justice in Africa’s extractives sector, particularly in the context of the critical minerals boom.
Specifically, the webinar sought to:
- Examine how fiscal policies, financial flows, and governance systems in extractives impact women.
- Identify policy, legal, and institutional gaps that perpetuate gender inequality.
- Highlight feminist and gender-responsive approaches to taxation, investment, and revenue governance.
- Build momentum for advocacy, partnerships, and policy reform at national, regional, and continental levels.
Key Discussions and Insights
- Gendered Impacts of Extractive-Led Growth
Speakers underscored that women disproportionately bear the social and environmental costs of extractive activities, including land dispossession, environmental degradation, increased unpaid care work, and heightened risks of gender-based violence. Despite this, women remain underrepresented in formal employment and rarely benefit from mineral revenues or compensation frameworks.
The critical minerals boom was highlighted as a double-edged sword—offering economic opportunity while intensifying land pressure, informality, and exploitation in artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM), where women are highly concentrated yet poorly protected.
- Gender-Blind Tax Regimes and Domestic Resource Mobilization
Participants noted that existing tax systems fail to recognize women’s economic realities, particularly unpaid care work and informal sector participation. In ASM, women often face punitive informal levies while remaining excluded from formal tax systems that could enable access to social protection and public services.
Corporate tax incentives and exemptions were criticized for eroding public revenues needed for essential services such as healthcare, education, water, and sanitation—services upon which women disproportionately rely.
- Illicit Financial Flows, Debt, and Economic Justice
IFFs from the extractives sector were identified as a major barrier to gender-equitable development. Panelists emphasized that revenue losses from tax evasion, transfer mispricing, and opaque contracts directly undermine governments’ ability to finance gender-responsive public services.
Rising public debt was also discussed as a gendered issue, with austerity measures often resulting in cuts to social spending, increasing women’s unpaid care burdens and economic vulnerability.
- Private Finance, Trade, and Investment Gaps
Speakers highlighted that private finance and investment in extractives remain largely gender-blind. Gender impact assessments, gender-responsive due diligence, and accountability mechanisms are rarely integrated into investment decisions.
Trade policies and commodity markets were also critiqued for prioritizing raw mineral exports over local value addition, limiting opportunities for decent, diverse, and gender-equitable employment across the value chain.
- Feminist Economic Justice and Governance
The webinar emphasized the need for a feminist economic justice framework—one that centers redistribution, recognition, representation, and accountability. This includes:
- Ensuring women’s meaningful participation in extractive governance, tax policy formulation, and revenue management.
- Strengthening transparency and accountability mechanisms across the extractives value chain.
- Aligning international development cooperation with gender-responsive fiscal governance and stronger corporate accountability.
Key Outcomes
The webinar achieved the following outcomes:
- Increased awareness of the gendered impacts of fiscal policies, financial flows, and extractive governance.
- Enhanced understanding of feminist and gender-responsive approaches to tax and economic justice.
- Identification of advocacy and policy reform opportunities at national and regional levels.
- Strengthened momentum for multi-stakeholder collaboration among civil society, policymakers, regional bodies, and development partners.
Calls to Action (CTAs)
For Governments and Policymakers
- Integrate gender-responsive analysis into tax, fiscal, and extractive governance frameworks.
- Reform tax incentives and strengthen measures to curb illicit financial flows.
- Ensure women’s meaningful participation in extractive decision-making and revenue management.
For Extractive Companies and Investors
- Adopt gender-responsive due diligence, transparency, and accountability mechanisms.
- Invest in women’s economic empowerment across the extractives value chain, including ASM.
For Civil Society and Women’s Rights Organizations
- Strengthen advocacy on feminist tax justice, debt justice, and extractive governance.
- Build coalitions to hold governments and corporations accountable for gendered impacts.
For Development Partners
- Support gender-transformative fiscal reforms and accountability initiatives.
- Align development cooperation with feminist economic justice principles in extractives.
Conclusion
The webinar reaffirmed that achieving sustainable and inclusive development in Africa’s extractives sector requires more than technical reforms—it demands a feminist rethinking of economic justice, taxation, and governance. As Africa navigates the critical minerals transition, centering women’s rights, voices, and economic realities is not optional, but essential for equitable and sustainable outcomes.