Harare, Zimbabwe (News of the South)-Africa’s mining trends won’t lead to any economic improvements for its population despite the presence of many minerals due to various poor mineral resource governance mistakes and bad policies among other reasons.
Some mining experts speaking in Harare said most African countries are already running out of minerals yet they is still no positive economic impact for their communities.
Mutuso Dhliwayo, Director of the Zimbabwe Environmental Law Association (ZELA) says many African governments are in a race for the bottom through the placement of unhealthy tax breaks for mining investors.
This is done in a bid to lure investors in a competition against other countries.
“In recent years mining has contributed between 25 and 90 percent of annual exported earnings for 13 African countries but most of the minerals are exported as raw materials without any significant value addition”.
“Thus the benefits are very minute”.
“Governments have been putting more emphasis on taxes but you can’t develop on taxes”, he said.
Dhliwayo said the competition for investors is also damaging to the countries.
“We are ending up negotiating with investors contracts that don’t add value to the country and basically losing out because some of the tax concessions are ridiculous and that’s called a race for the bottom as we are competing with each other for those investors”, he added.
Joyce Nyamukunda another mining law expert called for more involvement of Community Share Owners in mineral governance.
“There is a dearth in the level of involvement for the CSO’s which leaves them out, so there is a need to capacitate them so that they can stand up for their rights”, she said.
Zimbabwe has multiple CSO’s such as Mutoko Community Development Trust, Marange-Zimunya Community Share Ownership Trust and Shurugwi CDT.
All were created in government’s drive for inclusivity of the communities in the indigenisation drive.
However politics has derailed much of the gains from the CSO’s with some companies becoming embroiled in false promises to politicians to the detriment of the communities.
ZANU PF’s secretary for administration Dr Ignatius Chombo has since come out in the media promising to follow up the issue of the Zimunya Trust where nothing significant has been done for the community.
“Instead of getting the promised $10 million from the miners, we are told that not even a cent was given to the Trust.
“We want to rectify that situation and ensure that people are given what is due to them. Diamonds must benefit the people and not what we see here. There are no schools, clinics, roads and irrigation facilities that were supposed to have been developed or rehabilitated by funds from the mines”, he said.
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