Africa urged to  align mining laws
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Mines and Mining Development Minister Walter Chidhakwa (left), his South African counterpart Advocate Ngoako Ramatlhodi and African Union Commissioner Ms Fatima Harang take to the dance floor as Oliver Mtukudzi performed at an AU mining conference in Victoria Falls on Monday

Farirai Machivenyika  in VICTORIA FALLS
African nations should align their laws and policies if they are to maximise benefits from their mineral resources as envisaged in the African Mining Vision, Mines and Mining Development Minister Walter Chidhakwa said yesterday.Minister Chidhakwa said this while officially opening the ongoing First Extra-Ordinary Session of the Fourth African Union Conference of Ministers responsible for Mineral Resources.

“Nation States cannot deliver the vision alone,” he said. “African States need to rally together to secure the policy space required for the vision. Regional cooperation and integration are essential to reduce transaction costs, establish intra-regional synergies, enhance the continent’s competitiveness and realise economies of scale that would catalyse minerals cluster development.

“However, for goods, capital and other factors to freely flow in regional spaces, there is need to expedite intra-regional alignment of laws, regulations and fiscal regimes among other critical factors.”

Minister Chidhakwa said the continent was richly endowed with mineral resources, but said it was ironic that most of Africa’s population lived in poverty.

“The primary problem has been the racist and colonial natural resources laws in Africa which empower the investor at the expense of the citizenry who are the bona fide owners of the resource,” he said.

“Based on this flawed framework, most of the mining deals and activities on the continent have been opaque and detrimental to Africans. Corruption by both public and private sector players has compounded the malaise. Secondly, mining in Africa has been largely extractive without beneficiation or value addition.

“This has led to African countries exporting cheaply priced raw commodities while importing expensive refined products.”

The AMV was adopted in 2009 and set out the continent’s long term and broad development objectives on mineral extraction policies.

“The vision advocates for transparent, equitable and optimal exploitation of mineral resources to underpin broad-based sustainable growth and socio-economic development,” said Minister Chidhakwa.

“It aspires for a sustainable and well-governed mining 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.”

Minister Chidhakwa said the AU’s African Mineral Development Centre would play a critical role in coordinating mineral policies across the continent and the implementation of the AMV.

He said value addition and beneficiation were important in developing African economies and that Zimbabwe was going ahead with plans to establish the Pan-African Mineral University of Science and Technology as a way of enhancing skills development in the country.

The meeting is being attended by several ministers and officials from across Africa and the United Nations and other regional groups.

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