Governments that lack the capacity to mine resources themselves have to attract foreign direct investment. However, since resources are not renewable, countries need to capture a ‘fair’ share of mineral resource rent to promote their development. While the third raw materials super cycle increased the global turnover of the mining sector by a factor of 4.6 between 2002 and 2010, the tax revenues from the non-renewable natural resource sector earned by African governments only grew by a factor of 1.15. The sharing of mineral resource rent between governments and investors is often criticised for being unfavourable to African governments. But what do we really know about the mineral resource rent sharing in Africa? The aim of this study is to review theoretical and empirical studies on rent sharing in Africa and note their limits for the knowledge of the actual mineral rent sharing.