Oxford professor & Critical Resource senior advisory panel member argues firms can be 'strategic in influencing how host governments evolve'. Paul Collier...director of the Centre for the Study of African Economies at Oxford University...one of the world's leading experts on African and resource-rich economies...discusses how extractive sector companies can help to shape the operating environment in low-income resource-rich countries, and his own efforts through the Natural Resource Charter to help local civil society hold their governments to account on the management of resource revenues..."[to create an] informed constitutency of opinion within societies which forms a buffer on what government policies might be."