Australian mining companies wanting to do business in Africa have been warned: the old way of doing things is over for foreign companies.
African delegates at a conference in Perth have stressed that foreign miners are still welcome.
But they've also been emphasising that in a continent of rising expecations, foreign companies must be prepared for business arrangements that are both mutually-beneficial, and socially responsible.
In a hotel conference room in Perth, African heads of government, public servants and Australian resource companies are meeting to share ideas, expertise and maybe even sign a deal.
Delegates have been hearing an overall message that Africa is bursting at the seams with natural wealth, and with strengthening, transparent democracies.
They're being told Australia is doing a lot of business in Africa and wants to do more.
But South Africa's Mineral Resources Minister Susan Shabangu says investing in a country's resources also includes the people.
"If investment is not going to improve the quality of lives, and recognise that workers also need decent lives and they also have to make sure that their contribution balances that where workers can take care of their own families and their own responsibilities it will not be able to bring stability in South Africa."
The minister says Australian companies are viewed differently to the continent's historic investors.
"They don't have the baggage of the past. That's where the issue comes in in South Africa where some of the companies are still stuck or very slow because they come from the baggage of the past in South Africa whilst some of the companies are fairly new so they're coming in within the current democratic disposition and they're part of the new regulatory framework. So they don't have that. So definitely they will compare differently from those who have been there with us who have a baggage, who employed unskilled workers."
Susan Shabangu also acknowledges South Africa has made its own mistakes - including the deaths of mine workers at the Marikana mine last year.
Thirty-four miners were shot dead by the police as they protested over low wages at the platinum mine.
An inquiry into the incident is now underway in South Africa.
"As I indicated last year, we are confident that what transpired last year will not happen in South Africa. But I must also say that it has really impacted negatively on our economy. We working on that to have a process led by our Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe, which intends to once more deal with how best do we bring back stability in South Africa."
Also attending the conference has been Mario Pezzini from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
The Italian heads the OECD's Development Centre.
Mr Pezzini says Africa's productivity is improving, it has the world's largest population of young people, and the economy is growing.
"The bad news is that the pace of this growth still is not enough. Only seven per cent of the youths in sub-Saharan Africa have been capable to find a decent job therefore more is required. Probably something different is required. At this point it is very clear that you think you need to diversify the economy and therefore to abandon natural resources and move to other production. Well we think that this is not necessarily the case. We think that natural resources could be a very good passport for development under certain conditions."
Those conditions include diversifying the economy alongside a natural resources industry.
Frederico Bonaglia is also from the OECD's Development Centre.
"Australia is clearly another good example of how you can combine this broad range of natural resources to prompt diversification of the economy. We, yesterday, during the Africa [conference here there was a visit to a farm, which was run by a company, which I will not name, a big aluminium company and we were very impressed that they managed to do both mining and agriculture. And I think this is a key challenge for Africa: how you combine the value, the capacity of mining, the technology that they bring to also diversify and develop a culture sector of the economy, which is agriculture."
But, for some African countries, it's not as straight-forward.
Income from diamonds has driven the Botswanan economy, but its future is not secure.
Former Botswanan president Festus Mogae says diversifying its economy is proving difficult in the the country of two million people.
"This money is diminishing and is going to diminish, we're aware of that. Amongst other things, we did create a wealth fund, a sovereign fund for future generations, which can only be used in emergencies with approval of parliament. That's no guarantee that a new government will come and be spendthrift and the parliament will support its expenditure and so on. So we remain very much concerned, very vulnerable to vagaries as we saw happened in 2008."
Botswana is regarded as having led the way in being transparent with its deals, standing firm to international companies, and sharing the wealth from resource projects.
The government has provided free education, including university, and the literacy rate is nearly up to 90 per cent.
Former president Festus Mogae now heads the Coalition for Dialogue on Africa.
It's an advocacy group that shares experiences and expertise among African countries.
He says it's crucial that Africans band together to improve their collective strength, but he acknowledges there are serious shortcomings in leadership in some countries.
"We need the critical mass to deal with bigger, much bigger economies like China, Australia, Europeans, Americans and so on. We do need to share experiences. Really we have pledged to integrate and unfortunately we're not doing that because there are too many leaders that enjoy being tin-pot dictators all over the place in Africa and so they pay lip service to integration, but do nothing about it. To our disadvantage."
Frederico Bonaglia from the OECD says African countries with booming resource investment also need to manage their population's expectations.
"The problem is that every morning in the newspaper in Maputo or elsewhere, people are looking at the gas boom, so you're generating expectations and people believe that in a couple of years, five or six years, they'll become middle class, which is probably not going to be the case. So the risk here is you're putting fire on an already tense situation of rising expectations that may not be met. So it's a very urgent question for governments how to manage the expectations, not only how to manage the exchange rate."
