By Amin Kef Sesay
The standoff between the Government of Sierra Leone and Sierra Leone Mining Company has ended with an out of court settlement between the two parties. The Government announced that out of a little over 700,000 tons of mined high-grade iron ore that belongs to SL Mining, the company has agreed to share $20 million of the profit with the Government.
The paradox of Africa in general and Sierra Leone in particular is that the mineral and natural resource wealth and the pervasive poverty of its people remain a deep feature of the continent’s economic landscape.
Mining’s continuing contribution as a supplier of strategic minerals to industrialized countries, the lack of focus of policy on those minerals that play that role, the inadequate returns to the continent and the enclave nature of mining industries have, since colonial times, remained central features of our country’s mining landscape.
For example, if one goes to the mining communities of Lunsar, Ferengbeya, Yengema, Tongo Field, Mokanji, Mobimbi, to name but a few mining communities, one does not see any sign of infrastructural and social welfare facilities that benefit the people. All what one sees are ravaged environments.
This implies that the State that should create the political and legal security of the country’s mineral and natural resources has never done its work well resulting in what is known as ‘resource curse’.
As such, the African Mining Vision (AMV) seeks to shift mineral policy beyond a focus on extracting minerals and sharing revenue.
It relates such policy to the demand for structural transformation of Africa’s economies premised on the abundance and significance of its minerals, proposes an industrialization strategy anchored on minerals and other natural resources as critical for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, eradicating poverty and securing sustainable growth and development on the continent.
The AMV insists that mineral operations need not—and should not—be activities of an enclave. It acknowledges the governance challenges that overcome Africa’s minerals to contribute to sustainable development.
Within the framework of the Africa Mining Vision, going forward, what the Ministry of Mines and Mineral Resources and the National Minerals Agency should work to concretize, enact and implement are:
- Transparent, equitable, optimal exploitation of mineral resources to underpin broad-based sustainable growth and socioeconomic development
- A knowledge driven mining sector that catalyzes and contributes to the broad-based growth and development of the economy through:
- Downstream linkages into mineral beneficiation and manufacturing
- Upstream linkages into mining capital goods, consumables and services industries
- Side-stream linkages into infrastructure (power, logistics, communications and water) and skills and technology development
- Mutually beneficial partnerships among the State, the private sector, Civil Society, local communities and other stakeholders
- Comprehensive knowledge of the country’ mineral endowment
- A sustainable and well governed mineral sector that effectively garners and deploys resource rents and that is safe, healthy, gender and ethnically inclusive, environmentally friendly, socially responsible and appreciated by surrounding communities
- A mining sector that is a key component of a diversified, vibrant and globally competitive industrialized economy
- A mining sector that helps to establish a competitive infrastructure platform through the maximization of its propulsive local and international economic linkages
- A mining sector that optimizes and husbands the country’s finite mineral resource endowments and that is diversified, incorporating both high value metals and lower value industrial minerals at both commercial and small-scale levels
- A mining sector that harnesses the potential of artisanal and small-scale mining to stimulate local/national entrepreneurship, improve livelihoods and advance integrated rural social and economic development
- A mining sector that is a major player in vibrant and competitive national, continental and international capital and commodity markets
The implications of the Africa Vision for developing comprehensive national mineral policies are:
- Enhancing retained value by promoting linkages
- Obtaining an adequate share of mineral revenue
- Improving public participation and accountability
- Pursuing an integrated view of rights of various stakeholders
- Valuing environmental resources
- Using mineral revenue efficiently
- Promoting local development
- Encouraging regional cooperation and harmonization
- Strengthening institutions: building capacity and developing networks
