Overview

Banyan Global is supporting the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC)'s Social Analysis Practice Group (SA) to contribute to MCC and the Government of Liberia’s development and implementation of a mining governance strengthening project in Liberia. Aims include strengthening community participation in mining governance; improving transparency, accountable benefit sharing, and oversight of mining operations and related social risks; establishing workable compliance mechanisms; and reducing mining revenue losses. These reforms are expected to reduce investment risk while strengthening community influence, local economic participation and livelihoods, public revenue capture and allocation, and confidence in the sector.

The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) is a U.S. government agency that contributes to the safety, strength, and prosperity of the American people through time-limited investments that promote business growth and stability around the world. MCC works with partner governments to address binding constraints to economic growth through policy and institutional reform and infrastructure investments, with an emphasis on rigorous analysis and evaluation, country ownership, and durable results.

Assignment Structure

Banyan Global seeks two (2) mid- to senior experts who will work as an integrated team with MCC staff, other consultants, and senior Government of Liberia counterparts. The roles are complementary but distinct: Role 1 owns the legal form, drafting process, and senior reform engagement; Role 2 owns the social-governance substance, evidence base, implementation rationale, and operational guidance.

ROLE 1: LEGAL AND POLICY REFORM LEAD

Leads comparative legislative review, legal gap analysis, statutory and contractual drafting, model MDA development, and high-level engagement and negotiation. Converts SA priorities into precise, enforceable legal provisions and advances them with decision makers in the crafting of the new legislation and the MDA.

ROLE 2: SOCIAL GOVERNANCE TECHNICAL LEAD

Develops the technical content that Role 1 must carry into the law and model MDA. Provides evidence, policy options, implementation lessons, political-economy analysis, and operational guidance on community rights, benefit sharing, local content, ASM, social performance, and accountability. Ensures that Role 1 is technically prepared for legislative engagement and negotiation.

Coordination requirement. In addition to regular and ongoing communication and coordination, the experts will maintain a joint issue and drafting matrix document. The Social Governance Technical Lead will identify what should be included, why it matters, and what is feasible in practice. The Legal and Policy Reform Lead will determine how to express those priorities in law and contract, test them against the wider legal framework, and lead their presentation and negotiation. Each expert will review the other's core outputs to ensure legal precision, technical integrity, and implementability.

Overall Objective

The overall objective is to support MCC and the Government of Liberia in developing a coherent, enforceable, and operationally realistic mining-governance framework that reflects important social components. The assignment will contribute to the new mining law, Liberia's model mining development agreement (MDA), and related regulations, guidelines, and public-facing materials, with particular attention to community consultation and participation, benefit sharing and mining-revenue allocation, local content, artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM), social performance, disclosure, compliance, grievance management, and remedy.

Recommendations should draw on relevant comparative experience without mechanically importing foreign models. They should be calibrated to Liberia's institutional capacity and political economy, preserve Government of Liberia ownership, support responsible investment, and clearly connect legal and institutional reforms to improved outcomes for mining communities, Liberian businesses, and public institutions.

Shared Operating Requirements

• Work as part of a multi-disciplinary team under the direction of MCC/SA, and in collaboration with the broader MCC country team, other consultants, and Government of Liberia counterparts;
• Attend MCC meetings, Government of Liberia engagement sessions, drafting meetings, and other relevant calls, and provide concise readouts, talking points, decision notes, or follow-up analysis as requested;
• Support the preparation and review of MCC concept notes, investment memoranda, briefers, and other internal materials related to mining governance;
• Be available, if requested, for one or more missions to Monrovia. Possible counterparts include the Ministry of Mines and Energy, Liberia Land Authority, Ministry of Finance and Development Planning, local government, communities, ASM representatives, civil society, donors, and mining companies; and
• Produce client-ready English language deliverables that require minimal editing and protect sensitive deliberative information.

Role 1: Senior Mining Legal and Policy Reform Adviser

The Senior Mining Legal and Policy Reform Advisor (Role 1) will serve as the assignment's legal and policy reform lead representing the MCC Social Analysis Practice Group’s policy interests. This expert will conduct the comparative legislative review and legal gap analysis, draft and revise the mining law and model MDA provisions and represent or support MCC/SA's agreed reform priorities in mid-to senior level drafting discussions and negotiations. The adviser must combine exceptional command of the letter of the law with diplomacy, executive presence, political judgment, and the ability to build rapport and support for difficult reforms.

Role 1 Objective

To convert MCC and Government of Liberia policy objectives, including the social-governance priorities developed with Role 2, into coherent, precise, enforceable, and implementable legal and contractual provisions, and to help secure their incorporation into the new mining law, model MDA, and related instruments.

Role 1 Tasks

1. Comparative legislative review and legal gap analysis. Review Liberia's existing and draft mining legislation and relevant revenue-sharing, land, local-governance, investment, environmental, labor, and public-finance instruments. Compare selected mining laws, regulations, and model agreements from relevant jurisdictions[1]. Identify gaps, inconsistencies, ambiguous mandates, weak enforcement provisions, conflicts across instruments, and opportunities for harmonization.

2. Legislative architecture and drafting. Develop options for the structure and allocation of content among the mining law, regulations, model MDA, and operational guidance. Draft or revise clauses covering, as applicable, community consultation and participation; definitions and rights of affected, frontline, host, participating, and county-level beneficiary communities; community development funds and other revenue-allocation mechanisms; local content; ASM formalization; social-performance requirements; company reporting and disclosure; grievance and remedy systems; institutional responsibilities; monitoring; enforcement; sanctions; and transition provisions.[2]

3. Model MDA drafting. Prepare a structured package of model MDA provisions addressing community engagement; CDF contribution levels, governance, disbursement, and accountability; local employment and procurement; social-performance obligations linked to applicable IFC Performance Standards; reporting on employment, procurement, compensation, grievances, and CDF fulfillment; monitoring rights; remedies; and accessible grievance mechanisms[3]. Each provision should include a concise drafting annotation and implementation-risk note.

4. Legal quality control. Ensure that proposed provisions use consistent definitions, create clear rights and duties, identify responsible institutions, establish measurable standards and reporting requirements, provide workable compliance and enforcement mechanisms, and align with the wider Liberian legal framework. Track open legal questions, drafting alternatives, counterproposals, and decisions.

5. Senior engagement and negotiation. Lead or support high-level discussions with Government of Liberia officials and other stakeholders on the draft law and model MDA. Prepare negotiation objectives, talking points, redlines, fallback options, and responses to counterproposals. Use diplomacy, gravitas, and persuasive legal and policy reasoning to build consensus and secure incorporation of agreed priorities while maintaining constructive relationships and country ownership.

6. Integration of technical inputs. Work closely with Role 2 to translate social-governance evidence and implementation lessons into legally effective provisions. Where legal or political constraints require compromise, identify alternative formulations that preserve the core policy objective to the greatest extent possible.

Role 1 Required Qualifications

• Advanced degree in law, such as a JD, LLB, or LLM, or equivalent credentials and experience as a mid- to senior -level legislative or regulatory policy specialist. Admission to legal practice is strongly preferred.
• At least 5-7 years of progressively responsible experience in mining, extractives, natural-resources, investment, or public-law reform, including substantial direct responsibility for drafting or revising legislation, regulations, contracts, or model agreements.
• Demonstrated experience comparing laws and regulatory frameworks across multiple countries and converting comparative findings into practical recommendations for a law under revision.
• Exceptional statutory and contractual drafting skills, including the ability to translate policy goals into precise clauses that establish clear definitions, rights, duties, standards, institutional responsibilities, reporting requirements, enforcement tools, and remedies.
• Experience drafting or negotiating mining development agreements, concession agreements, community-development obligations, or comparable state-investor instruments.
• A proven record of advising senior officials, building support for reforms, influencing decision makers, and securing incorporation of agreed priorities into draft laws, regulations, policies, or agreements.
• Executive presence and gravitas, with excellent diplomacy, political judgment, discretion, consensus-building ability, and skill navigating high-stakes and politically sensitive negotiations.
• Strong understanding of implementation and enforcement constraints, including the ability to distinguish between legally elegant provisions and provisions that public institutions and regulated entities can implement in practice.
• Excellent written and spoken English and ability to produce polished legal and policy deliverables under tight timelines.

Role 1 Preferred Qualifications

• Substantive experience in Sub-Saharan Africa; West Africa experience is preferred, and Liberia-specific knowledge is an advantage.
• Experience with one or more of the following: mining-revenue allocation, CDFs, customary land and community rights, local content, ASM formalization, social-performance standards, disclosure, grievance systems, or trafficking-in-persons safeguards.
• Prior experience with MCC frameworks and compact-development processes.

Role 2: Senior Mining Social Governance Technical Expert

The Senior Mining and Social Governance Technical Expert (Role 2) will serve as the assignment's social-governance technical lead and will support Role 1 in defining the substantive priorities to be advanced in the new mining law and model MDA. This expert will research and articulate what protections, obligations, incentives, and accountability mechanisms are needed; why they matter; what comparable experience shows; and how they can be framed so they are credible to government, industry, communities, and MCC. Role 2 will not lead statutory drafting or negotiations but must be able to review draft clauses for technical completeness, feasibility, and unintended consequences.

Role 2 Objective

To provide (and convey to Role 1) the evidence, policy options, practical implementation knowledge, and operational guidance needed to ensure that Liberia's mining-law and model MDA reforms meaningfully strengthen community participation, benefit sharing, local economic inclusion, ASM governance, social performance, accountability, and remedy.

Role 2 Tasks

1. Social-governance diagnosis and policy options. Assess the current framework and develop technically grounded options on community consultation and participation; oversight mechanisms; definitions and rights of affected and beneficiary communities; community mapping, registration, representation, and financing; participation in mineral-rights allocation and MDA processes; benefit sharing and CDF governance; local content; ASM formalization; social-performance obligations; compensation; disclosure; grievance management; and remedy.

2. Revenue, benefit-sharing, and institutional analysis. Examine how mining-revenue allocation, CDFs, fiscal decentralization, community-development arrangements, customary land recognition, institutional coordination, and public financial-management processes shape outcomes in practice. Map relevant agency mandates, decision points, cash and data flows, bottlenecks, accountability gaps.

3. Comparative implementation evidence and political economy. Identify lessons from comparable mining contexts, with emphasis on what governments, companies, and communities have successfully implemented and where reforms have failed or produced unintended consequences. Assess administrative capacity, incentives, vested interests, sequencing needs, compliance burdens, and likely areas of resistance or contestation.

4. Technical support to law and MDA drafting. Provide Role 1 with concise issue notes, policy recommendations, definitions, minimum standards, implementation requirements, and technical rationale. Review evolving law and MDA drafts to confirm that they capture the intended social outcomes and identify omissions, loopholes, implementation risks, or adverse incentives. Integrate relevant guidance and findings from MCC's Counter Trafficking in Persons (CTIP) policy and project-specific trafficking-in-persons risk (TIP) assessment(s).

5. Operational guidelines and implementation tools. Develop practical guidance to accompany the legal framework, potentially including structured community-consultation procedures for exploration and development; CDF governance, disbursement, community access, and reporting; company social-performance reporting; local-content verification; ASM interfaces; grievance-system design; and government monitoring and enforcement of MDA community obligations. Guidance must be calibrated to Liberia's institutional capacity.

6. Results logic and monitoring framework. Develop a clear theory of change linking legal and institutional reforms to outcomes for mining communities, Liberian workers and businesses, government revenue and oversight, and responsible investors. Propose practical indicators, data sources, disclosure rules, responsibilities, and monitoring arrangements.

7. Stakeholder consultation and field support. Support or conduct consultations, surveys, key-informant interviews, and other methods to test local preferences and implementation assumptions. Translate stakeholder evidence into technical recommendations and concise inputs for Role 1, MCC SA, and the wider country team.

Role 2 Required Qualifications

• Advanced degree in anthropology, sociology, economics, public policy, development studies, natural-resource governance, mining, law and society, or another relevant field, or equivalent mid- to senior -level professional experience.
• At least 5-7 years of progressively responsible experience in mining social governance, extractives governance, community relations, ESG or social performance, or related public-policy and institutional-reform work.
• Substantial hands-on experience designing or implementing regulatory instruments, operational guidelines, community provisions, or company systems governing mining-sector engagement with and accountability to communities.
• Demonstrated expertise in several of the following: community consultation and participation, benefit sharing and CDFs, mining-revenue allocation, local content, ASM governance and formalization, customary land and community rights, social-performance standards, compensation, disclosure, grievance redress, or trafficking-in-persons risks.
• Familiarity with IFC Performance Standards and their application to mining, especially community engagement, land and resettlement, grievance management, benefit sharing, and social-risk management.
• Experience conducting institutional analysis, including mapping mandates, decision processes, cash and data flows, incentives, vested interests, capacity constraints, and implementation bottlenecks.
• Experience translating reforms into practical theories of change, indicators, reporting, and disclosure rules, monitoring arrangements, and institutional responsibilities.
• Experience in Sub-Saharan Africa. West Africa experience is preferred, and Liberia-specific knowledge is an advantage.
• Proven ability to work credibly with senior government officials, companies, civil society, and mining-affected communities, and to communicate complex technical issues clearly to legal and non-legal audiences.
• Excellent written and spoken English and ability to produce concise, client-ready technical deliverables under tight timelines.

Role 2 Preferred Qualifications

• Direct mining-company experience with ESG, community relations, or social-performance implementation, or comparable implementation depth within a regulator, multilateral institution, consultancy, or civil-society organization.
• Experience applying customary-land frameworks to mining consultation, compensation, benefit sharing, and negotiations where boundaries or representative bodies are not formally registered.
• Prior experience with MCC frameworks and compact-development processes.

Level of Effort and Period of Performance

The anticipated combined level of effort for the two positions is up to 60-90 days between August 1, 2026, and March 31, 2027. The final allocation of days between Role 1 and Role 2 will be established during contracting and reflected in the approved joint workplan. Both experts must be available for short-notice remote support and, if requested, travel to Liberia.