In its latest report covering the 2024 fiscal year, the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) Senegal reveals significant progress in governance and transparency. The review of the Register of Beneficial Owners (RBE) indicates that 628 companies declared their beneficial owners between June 1, 2021, and August 31, 2025, marking an important step in implementing international beneficial ownership requirements.

Indeed, since 2016, countries implementing the EITI Standard have committed to adopting stronger requirements on beneficial ownership disclosure in the extractive sector. This commitment materialized with the entry into force, on January 1, 2020, of EITI Standard Requirement 2.5, which mandates the public disclosure of beneficial ownership of extractive companies operating, investing, or bidding in the sector.

This approach will improve the investment climate, strengthen public trust, increase accountability, and support domestic revenue mobilization. Knowing the true owners of companies also helps to uncover potential conflicts of interest, particularly when politically exposed persons are involved.

In Senegal, the implementation of this requirement was based on Decree No. 2020-791 of March 19, 2020, which established the procedures for the organization and operation of the Register of Beneficial Owners, housed within the Trade and Personal Property Credit Register (RCCM). This system was supplemented by Ministerial Order No. 1859 of February 5, 2021, issued by the Minister of Justice, which validated the official declaration form.

However, access to the RBE was initially conditional upon demonstrating a legitimate interest, thus limiting the public's right to information. This restriction was lifted with the adoption of Decree No. 2025-1354 of August 27, 2025, which established free access to certain key data in the register, in accordance with the 2023 EITI Standard and international transparency standards.

In the wake of this, EITI Senegal published in October 2025 an extract from the register, containing several hundred declarations, thus offering citizens, the media and civil society a new tool for analysis and control.

The disclosure of beneficial owners has major strategic implications.

For the State, it constitutes an instrument of national security, economic sovereignty and revenue mobilization, while promoting transparency in the granting of mining permits and titles.

For companies, publishing beneficial ownership information strengthens healthy competition and supports due diligence efforts with respect to the government and partners.

For civil society, access to beneficial ownership mapping is an essential lever for accountability and citizen control.

It is in this context that the National EITI Committee, with the support of the Opening Extractives program, organized a capacity-building session for justice sector actors and EITI stakeholders. This global program, developed by the EITI and Open Ownership, aims to improve the availability, quality, and use of beneficial ownership data, with the ultimate goal of strengthening the mobilization of national resources from the extractive sector by the end of 2025.

The specific objectives of this session include the appropriation of RBE data, the improvement of the quality of declarations, the identification of difficulties encountered on the platform and the concrete use of data in the granting of permits and the implementation of local content.

The Permanent Secretary of the National EITI Committee, Thaddée Adiouma Seck, welcomed the commitment of the Ministry of Justice and recalled that, despite the notable progress, challenges remain, particularly in terms of data quality and raising citizen awareness.

"This volume of information made available to the Senegalese citizen will allow stakeholders to carry out analyses on the quality of the information contained in the Register. This is therefore the place for me to launch an appeal for in-depth exchanges. The new dynamic initiated by decree 2025-2354 certainly poses challenges, but constitutes a real opportunity to advance policies to combat corruption, money laundering and illicit financial flows," he indicated.