This report presents the result of a survey commissioned by Gorée Institute to examine the nature and character of natural resource governance as part of it continuous efforts to contribute to conflict prevention effort and peacebuilding in West Africa. The study was particularly conceptualized as a first step to contribute in addressing the culture of silence surrounding poor natural resource governance and its resulting peace, human rights and human security implications.

It was also in view of the emphasis place on the significance of research as a contribution to knowledge, and bases for intervention in the form of advocacy that Gorée Institute undertook this research targeting the four Mano River Basin countries namely: Sierra Leone, Guinea-Conakry, Liberia and Cote d’Ivoire. The Institute is of the firm conviction that such culture of silence must be broken through evidencebased research of this nature, whose findings will provide effective remedy to the problem from a civil society perspective.