Local Content is a development strategy in the oil and gas sector aimed at increasing the benefits to other sectors of the economy. While this strategy has been widely adopted in Africa and Latin America, little is known about why local content strategies have been successful – or not – in specific country cases. Mapping these factors is challenging since every country demonstrates particular conditions and these factors may function differently depending on the context.

This paper compares the experiences of seven Latin American and seven African countries in order to identify the common factors that can help explain the achievement of positive local content outcomes. It argues that using a comparative strategy makes it possible to identify conditions that are present across cases that are very different from one another in many important respects, but that have all managed to achieve success in the implementation of local content frameworks. Because these common factors exist in such different contexts and yet lead to similar outcomes, the authors have some confidence that they can make policy recommendations for other countries and regions based on the findings of the analysis.

Authors:
Marcela Morales
Juan José Herrera
Elijah Mushemeza
John Okiira