ACTIVISTS CALL FOR END TO PLUNDER OF AFRICA'S NATURAL RESOURCES
Lindlyn Tamufor, Environment Programme Officer|4/2/2007
Link: http://www.twnafrica.org/news_detail.asp?twnID=976
Participants at one of the events at the World Social Forum have
restated the case that
multinational mining companies continue to plunder Africa's mineral
resources with little regard for environmental, health and
socio-economic losses to communities affected by their operations as
well as the host nations, writes * Lin Tamufor.
Titled, 'Natural resources and Africa's development challenges', the
seminar placed emphasis on social justice in mineral resource
extraction, impacts on communities affected by mining as well as
socio-economic benefits to mineral endowed countries. Participants
spoke emotionally about the adverse effects mining has had on their
communities describing the devastation that mineral resource
extraction has caused them through loss of livelihood, pollution of
water sources, and the resultant deprivation that wounds their dignity
as a people.
The organizers of the seminar were the African Initiative on Mining,
Environment and Society (AIMES), a network of activists, academics,
civil society groups, communities affected by mining, drawn from
across Africa. They were joined by people from all over the world who
take some interest in the development challenges facing Africa as far
as maximizing the extraction of its mineral resources is concerned.
The seminar also addressed the question of natural resource
exploitation and conflicts in Africa. An AIMES member, Abdulai
Darimani, led the discussion by giving a broad overview of natural
resource as a cause of conflict in many African countries. The civil
wars in The Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Angola, Sierra
Leone and the current crises in Darfur were identified as part of the
ignominious cycle of the natural resource conflict.
One speaker on natural resource and conflict was from Guinea which has
just emerged from martial law sparked by mine workers strike followed
a by general civil strife due to dissatisfaction with the political
regime. He described Guinea, a country endowed with so much mineral
wealth, as a 'geological scandal' as it remains vastly underdeveloped
with poverty and deprivation being the lot of its citizens.
A Tanzanian participant in a contribution gave a testimony of how he
was imprisoned because he questioned the benefits of mining to his
community and publicly criticized the government and mining companies.
He was at the WSF while on bail pending trial.
Horror stories of the civil war in Sierra Leone and the situation of
conflict diamond vis-a-vis the new Kimberley process where narrated.
In most diamond endowed villages in Sierra Leone, according to a
Sierra Leonian participant, the people are cut of from their wealth
because of the inadequate nature of benefit-sharing. Participants from
Ghana talked about the militarization of mining towns and the massive
human rights abuse occurring in the mining communities as a result of
this.
Solution
One major contention was the suggestion by a UK-based activist that
people, civil society, activists buy shares in the mining companies so
as to use their leverage to ensure 'best practice' operations by the
companies. He declared that his organization has been buying shares in
mining companies and that with substantial shares they had a say in
the management of the mining companies and ...
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