Mineral Sector Governance

The growing failure of mineral prices on the international market, advancing debt crunch and declining revenue to finance socio-economic development in many African countries has refocused attention on how to efficiently and most favorably use the continent’s vast mineral sector through prompt application of the African Mining Vision (AMV).

The Vision explores ways to stimulate an open, just and maximum exploitation of mineral resources to establish broad-based viable growth and socio-economic progress. This sustainable gain should shift away from an interest first model of extractive-led expansion to that of mineral-focused that places advancement front and centre of the mineral value chain, along with upstream, downstream and side-stream opportunities for revamping the sector to an engine for architectural transformation through industrialization and diversification. African countries did not prosper from the industrial revolution boom and have continued to undergo de-industrialization as well as lack of progressivity in economical instruments including illegitimate leakages. Yet, seven years after African heads of state adopted the AMV at their February 2009 Summit, very few countries have adjusted their minerals policy to the reform agenda, which seeks ways to encourage a standard change in mineral resource governance. Nonetheless, these new developments have sparked revived efforts to move towards fulfillment of the AMV. In 2015, the AMDC (Africa Mineral Development Centre) announced an AMV firm with the private sector. In March 2016, the AMDC hosted a technical workshop to outline an African Mineral Governance scheme to reinforce the utilization and auditing of the AMV.

It is contrary to this scrim that the African Union Commission (AUC) and United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) did convene a continent-wide two-day high level round-table on March 21-22, 2016 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to further look at ways to promote and process the African Minerals Governance Framework (AMGF) for the AMV. The all-inclusive meeting brought about 120 stakeholders from various African governments, the AU, UNECA, AMDC, Pan African institutions and civil society. The supervisory structure directs all seven key foundations of the AMV, specifically the fiscal regime and revenue management; geological and mineral information systems; building human and institutional capacity; artisanal and small-scale mining; mineral sector governance; linkages, investment and diversification; and environment and social issues. (TJNA, 2016)