Brief Notes for Press Briefing of Upcoming Africa Mining Vision meeting:
26-29 June, 2012, Grand Mensvic Hotel, East Legon, GHANA
Conference: Third World Network Africa is hosting an African civil society networks conference on the Africa Mining Vision (AMV) from June 26-29th, 2012 at Mensvic Grand Hotel, East Legon, Accra, Ghana. This conference is being jointly organized by the pan-African extractive sector network AIMES (African Initiative on Mining, Environment and Society) and the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) Africa and it is a meeting of Africa-wide cross networks/constituencies on the Africa Mining Vision (AMV).
Background: Mining and mineral resources have been important in the trade and investment relations of Africa with the world. Africa has been one of the key suppliers of strategic minerals to industrialized countries since colonial times. Despite the long history of mining, the continent is yet to fully optimize the potential of mineral resources to catalyze economic transformation. Since the late 1980s, governments of Africa have undertaken series of reforms aimed at optimizing the contribution of mining to national economic development of mineral producing and exporting countries.
The favourable environment the reforms created aided the revival of foreign investment in Africa’s mining sector. While the revival of foreign investment has expanded mineral production and exports, its contribution to social and economic development objectives has been far less certain and has even been contested in many countries across the continent. At the peak of the expansion in global demand and rise in the price of various minerals and metals before the onset of the global financial and economic crisis in 2008, mineral producing and exporting countries found themselves with disproportionately marginal revenues compared with earnings of mining companies. Even as the surge in demand and prices fuelled the best period of growth on the continent for thirty years, the developments also provoked reflections about the experiences of two decades of continuous attraction of foreign direct investment in Africa’s mining sector.
Part of these reflections was the recognition of the continent’s inability to optimize benefits from the production and price booms occasioned at the peak of global demand for minerals and metals. A process was set in motion to review and reform the mining regimes operating on the continent in order to improve the developmental impact of mining. The process began with a meeting in February 2007 (known as the “Big Table”) jointly organized by the UN-ECA and the African Development Bank on the theme “Managing Africa’s Natural Resources for Growth and Poverty Reduction”. The Big Table rolled out processes for the development of an agenda and principles for strengthening the role of mining in Africa’s development. In particular, the Big Table established an International Study Group (ISG) to document the history and experiences of mining on the continent so as to provide a bas is for review and reform of current mining regimes operating in Africa.
These processes resulted in the production and adoption of three important policy documents: First is the Africa Mining Vision (AMV) which was adopted by the Heads of State and Government of the Africa Union in February 2009 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The second is an action plan for the realization of the AMV which was adopted in December 2011 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia by African Ministers responsible for mineral development. A Report of the International Study Group (ISG) which deepens analysis of key tenets of the AMV and from which the Action Plan draws content was also launched during the Addis Ababa ministerial conference in December 2011.
Taken together these policy documents offer a framework for a shift away from the current regimes of mining towards a new set of regimes that optimizes the benefits and contribution of mining towards Africa’s economic transformation. In order to depart into the new regime envisioned by the policy documents, a strong constituency of change rooted in ownership and support within African society is required. African civil society organizations and their networks are key part of the agents for the change.
Purpose: The conference is convened to facilitate and deepen understanding of the processes and substantive content of the reform agenda, especially in relation to the AMV, its action plan and the ISG Report. The meeting is also expected to generate common understanding about opportunities and challenges around the African mining reform agenda, and to make inputs and contributions to the Business Plan of the African Minerals Development Centre (AMDC). The AMDC, which is based in the joint secretariat of the African Union (AU), UN-ECA and African Development Bank (AfDB), is a coordinating centre for the implementation of decisions towards the realization of the AMV.
Participants: The conference will bring together about fifty (50) participants drawn from representatives of African civil society networks/coalitions and social constituencies from labour movements, mining affected community groups, artisanal and small scale mining organizations, gender groups, the media, policy officials, among others.
Issues: The four day conference would be devoted to improving and deepening knowledge and understanding of participants nine (9) cluster of issues implicated by the AMV, the action plan and the ISG report. These issues are: Managing and protecting community livelihoods, human rights and the environment in mining areas; Towards decent work and equitable incomes in the mining industry challenges of the changing public policy and transforming the labour regimes within large scale mining; Artisanal Small Scale Mining public policy and local enterprise development; Mineral Commodity dependence and the development challenges; Fiscal policies and the transformation of mineral economy; The economic and political issues of Linkages and diversification; Institutions and process for the delivery on the reforms; and building synergies for transformation. In addition the conference would discuss and make contributions to the Business Plan of the Africa Minerals Development Centre.
Outputs: The conference is expected to conclude with an adoption of a common position for advocacy on the reform agenda as well as a set of recommendations for improving the effective functioning and the business plan of the Africa Minerals Development Centre.
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