Partnerships or patronage for development? Business-Civil Society Organisations (CSO) partnerships in the mining sector in Madagascar

Business-CSO partnerships offer a range of potential benefits for addressing development challenges. These relate to their potential to link commercially, market-driven investment projects and private sector know-how that can contribute to creating more and better jobs, with socially grounded, networked approaches of CSOs whose primary aim is to promote inclusive development within a given territory. Given the growing enthusiasm for public policy-makers to support cooperation between businesses and CSOs, there is a clear need for a greater level of transparency and accountability as well as more analysis and an in-depth understanding of the drivers and key constraints to effective strategic CSO-business partnerships for development. This is particularly so in the extractive sector in Africa, the focus of this paper.