ELUSIVE MINING BENEFITS
ZAMBIA, it has been said is in the middle of a bidding war, with major mining companies fighting to secure extraction rights.
KoBold Metals, a company partly owned by billionaires Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos have declared their stake and believe its Mingomba copper project in Zambia “will be one of the world’s biggest high grade large copper mines.”
Zambians remain unmoved because mining fortunes have never quite percolated to the ordinary Zambian.
Instead, two distinct economies have emerged, namely the urban and rural economies. Until its downfall, the Copperbelt enjoyed some trickledown effect from excellent social facilities provided to their employees, thereby raising their standard of living. Rural areas never enjoyed any direct benefit. Fortunes have however changed with the decline in mining resulting in a deterioration of poverty levels. Whereas in 2015 the instant of poverty was estimated at 54.4 percent, by 2022 it had increased to 60 percent meaning that 60 out of every 100 Zambians were poor.
It has now been estimated that poverty has inched closer to 64 percent of Zambians living below US$2 a day.
This is inspite of continuing mining activities and more specifically, the emerald and gemstone sector, which are reputed to produce world class quality gemstones. Many of these are sold below the radar and like cobalt, both emeralds and Sugilite trade below the radar where statistics are hard to find and therefore total volume of sales equally impossible to measure.
Overall, mining legacy results are not only deleterious but engender long term disadvantage to the ordinary Zambians who must face problems of land degradation, river pollution and acid rain arising from mineral processing systems.
The overall result is that ordinary Zambians do not benefit from their natural God given mineral resources, whose benefits accrue to capital owners.
Successive governments have attempted to establish poverty eradication programmes but these have often been disparate and not cohesive enough to sustain traction that lifts the poor from their doldrums.
One of the immediate responses has been income support schemes including social cash transfer directed at the vulnerable. This is self-limiting and without real impact on the root causes of poverty.
Fortunately such companies as FQM have introduced social investment which focuses on long term strategies aimed at enhancing human capital and promoting social inclusion.
This may indeed be the course government should take in order to tackle poverty arising from under productivity. While direct financial assistance may alleviate short term financial needs there is need for long term investment including job training and other empowerment activities including affordable housing initiatives, access to improved health care but more importantly skills development that generates beneficiation and value addition to whatever activities peasants or school leavers may engage in.
The extractive industry should be directed towards long term social investment so that individual communities where they operate will derive long term benefit beyond the existence of the mine and like every African extended family this benefit will accrue beyond the nuclear family.
The government must therefore take it upon itself to create holistic policies that incorporate the percolation of skills and value from industry, especially the mines into communities beyond the Copperbelt, thereby ensure long term investment and social sustenance.