Johnny West is director of OpenOil, a Berlin-based consultancy which uses open data and methodologies to build investment-grade financial and commercial analysis for governments and societies of their natural resource assets. He sits on the Advisory Board of FAST, the only open source financial modelling standard, is an alumnus of the Shuttleworth Foundation Fellowship and serves a member of the Open Knowledge Foundation Board of Directors.
Here’s an open data story that might sound a bit counterintuitive. Last month a multinational company was negotiating with an African government to buy an asset. The company, which already…