Africa Surveyors January-February issue 2023 digital

MINING
If African countries
had better
governance,
increased mining
would not be such
a controversial
issue.
mineral wealth estimated in the tens of
trillions of dollars but the average Congolese
person only earns $700 a year. Guinea — a
small West African country with only 13.5
million inhabitants — enjoys massive and
high-quality bauxite reserves: some 7.4bn
metric tons, 23% of the world’s total. Its
supply is vital to global aluminium production
and for the energy transition to go ahead
but the average Guinean only earns $1,440
a year.
By 2040, at least 30 times as much lithium,
nickel and other key minerals may be
required by the electric car and battery
storage industries to meet global climate
targets, according to the International Energy
Agency (IEA). Similarly, the rise of low-carbon
power generation to meet climate goals
means a tripling of mineral demand from this
sector by 2040. In May 2021, the IEA declared
that the world is undergoing a massive
industrial conversion that marks a “shift
from a fuel-intensive to a material-intensive
energy system”.
Minimising environmental impacts
The potential for mineral transformation
creates an enormous economic opportunity
for Africa. However, increased mining in the
region throws up two major issues that do
need addressing — natural habitat loss and
inequality. In the end, both these problems
are a question of governance.
Further mining will inevitably result in
greater deforestation. It is not only the new
mining sites that will destroy forests but also
all the associated roads and new settlements.
The region is already seeing massive
destruction of its natural habitat. In 2020, the
continent had 636.64m hectares of forest,
16% of the world’s total. But it witnessed the
greatest annual rate of net forest loss of any
region in the world — at 3.94m ha — between
2010 and 2020.
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A gold mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Image by: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg/Getty
Images
There is also a big question mark around
whether the local communities really gain
much economically from all the new mining
activity. This is not a challenge unique to
Africa; in many cases, it is the elites in
wealthy capital cities that enjoy most of the
financial rewards from mining.
In Africa specifically, foreign miners
headquartered in Europe, North America and
China eager to expand their portfolios adds
another dimension to this issue, and another
type of actor who could take revenue away
from local workers.
The need for better governance in Africa
If African countries had better governance,
increased mining would not be such a
controversial issue. Africa requires ‘responsible
mining’, defined as mining that involves and
respects all stakeholders, minimises and
takes account of its environmental impact
and prioritises a fair division of economic and
financial benefits. But the crux of the problem
is that for responsible mining to really work,
a country needs good governance in the first
place and most African countries just do not
have it.
Transparency International’s Corruption
Perceptions Index ranks 180 countries
by their perceived levels of public sector
corruption on a scale of zero (highly corrupt)
to 100 (very clean). In 2021, the sub-Saharan
Africa average was 33 — the lowest in the
world — and 44 African countries ranked
below 50.
Improving governance in Africa is not an easy
thing to do. Many African countries are fragile
democracies at best, and in a number of cases
they are outright dictatorships. Whenever
possible Western governments need to bear
pressure on African governments to take
steps to become better, more sophisticated
democracies, or at least implement aspects
of governance such as labour rights and
environmental protection.
That in itself is not a straightforward task for
many Western governments to do without
being accused of colonial-style interference,
and reflects a paradox at the heart of much of
African mining: more effective mining could
deliver great economic benefits and a sense
of autonomy for local groups, but should this
mining come from foreign companies and
over-reaching Western powers, there is a risk
of it all being for nought.
Africa stands at an economic threshold.
The energy transition – through increased
mining – could improve the region’s wealth
immeasurably. It is an economic opportunity
that must be seized. However, it falls on the
continent’s next generation to ensure that
their governments are more accountable and
that a lot more mining can be balanced at
least to some extent with conservation of the
natural environment. They must also ensure
that the economic benefits of more mining
are more evenly spread.
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