African American aviation pioneer, John Robinson, who constructed his first airplane out of spare automobile parts in the 1930s, found opportunity in Africa when he went to the aid of embattled Emperor Haile Selassie in Ethiopia before World War II. Today Mr. Robinson is known as one of the founders of Africa's most reliable premier Ethiopian Airways.
Like Haile Selassie, in 2017 Neema Mushi, founder of Licious Adventure in Tanzania, was eager to make a U.S. connection. She was looking for U.S. companies willing to carry the African textiles and other items her shop sells to the tourists her company's guides lead up Mount Kilimanjaro and to the beaches of Zanzibar. Now, however, not U.S. companies but Chinese ones, such as Anningtex, Buwanas, Hitarget, and Sanne, fill Ms. Mushi's shelves with mass produced, Chinese-made "African" textiles, called kitenge. Locally-owned African textile producers in Nigeria and Ghana, unable to compete with lower-cost Chinese goods, have gone out of business.
The point is: if you are an importer; photo journalist or documentary filmmaker looking for a story; someone interested in trying out a new teaching or low-cost home construction technique; a miner or an adventurer seeking opportunities of any kind, Africa welcomes you.
Two essential ingredients help you get started: money and contacts. With a nest egg, car to sell, or Sugar Daddy, you can plunk down $1000-plus for an airplane ticket and head for Africa immediately. Although a crowdfunding appeal, saving from a job, or persuading a media outlet to fund your project, will delay your take off, keep an eye on the prize.i Also consider submitting a Scholar Registration to Birthright AFRICA at birthrightafrica.org. This new non-profit in New York City is the brainchild of Walla Elsheikh, an immigrant from Sudan who began his career in finance at Goldman Sachs. His vision is to send young African-Americans on free trips to Africa to explore and connect with their cultural roots. On these trips, young adults also have an unique opportunity to discover ways they could begin their careers in Africa.
Economic officers in foreign Embassies and consulates should be able to provide helpful local contacts in Africa, but don't neglect seeking assistance from missionary communities. Religious orders in your home country can put you in touch with their superiors in African host countries. For example, in Namibia, Africa, China built a container terminal and nearby oil storage installation at Walvis Bay, and South Africa's De Beers Group extracted 1.4 million carats from the offshore coastal waters. I also saw Sister Patricia Crowley, at the St. Scholastica Monastery in Chicago, was about to leave for Windhoer, Namibia, to serve as spiritual director on a one year assignment at a Benedictine missionary community there. An appointment with Sister Patricia in Chicago could lead to a letter introducing your purpose and background to those who could help you in Namibia.
Likewise, visiting communities of Dominican nuns in a home country could provide contacts with the nuns who teach girls to make a living by sewing and using a computer in Bukoba, Tanzania, and the nuns who teach farmers to plant hybrid tomato crops that withstand heat and insect infestations in Nairobi, Kenya.
On their outposts in Lagos, Nigeria, and Nairobi, the Jesuit order can provide inspiration and information for those investigating Africa careers. While assigned to the Jesuit Refugee Service in East Africa, Father James Martin, author of The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything, helped set up tailoring shops, several small restaurants, a bakery, a little chicken farm, and the Mikono Centre that sells African handicrafts. By following in the path of African-inspired Picasso and a Mozambican wood carver who sold a three-foot-tall ebony sculpture at the Mikono Centre, artists from around the world may find fulfillment working in Africa.
In Hia, Ghana, Bishop Afoakwah would appreciate a visit from a journalist willing to investigate the complicated land ownership rights, deeds held by chiefs, and government's incomplete database of mining concessions. Although the bishop thought the church held a legal deed to land a chief donated for a clinic and nursing school, Chinese miners began digging "Mr. Kumar's" gold mine on the property.
Ghana is not the only African country in need of land use planners, legal assistance, doctors, teachers and others willing to discover career opportunities in Africa.
Showing posts with label diamonds. Show all posts
Showing posts with label diamonds. Show all posts
Monday, March 2, 2020
Friday, August 3, 2018
New Beginning for Zambia and Zimbabwe Falters
In the unfortunate country, where a protected lion named Cecil met his fate at the hands of a trophy hunter, voters braved intimidation to elect members of parliament and a new president on July 30, 2018. But violence began tearing up the country days after the election. Not only losing candidates and their supporters protested the less than free and fair election, but winners in the Zanu-PF party and the military also split into competing factions.
A rise in fuel prices on January 12, 2019 again set off protests, sent soldiers into the streets to kill 8, and blocked internet access until January 16. At the same time, President Mnangagwa departed for Moscow, where he agreed to give the Russian company, Alrosa, access to Zimbabwe's diamond mines.
After World War II, Great Britain grouped Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia), Zambia (then Northern Rhodesia), and Malawi (then Nyasaland) into the Central African Federation. London's plan made perfect sense economically, but not politically. Located within Northern Rhodesia, valuable exports from the Copper Belt, shared with the Congo's Katanga Province, already traveled south by rail through Rhodesia to ports in South Africa. Rhodesia, named for Cecil Rhodes, whose guns defeated Chief Lobengula of the Ndebele people who inspired the costumes for Black Panther, had a developed agricultural economy with farms capable of feeding the region and generating tobacco and chinchilla pelt exports. Yet to be mined rich deposits of gold and platinum still exist. Migrant workers from Nyasaland were used to working Rhodesia's farms. They would consult their lists of good and bad employers before agreeing where to work.
The two most prosperous countries in the former federation, Zambia and Zimbabwe, struggle to get back on track. Zambia, one of the African countries that received debt forgiveness in 2005-2006 began spending freely just when copper prices tanked and a new regime increased the number of districts where it could reward leaders with graft. By 2018, Zambia defaulted on a Chinese loan repayment, and immediately Beijing was ready to begin talks to takeover ZESCO, Zambia's electric company, even though President Edgar Lungu claimed the Cabinet would have to approve such a measure. China already owns Zambia's national broadcaster, ZNBC.
Black majorities in Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland broke away from white-ruled Rhodesia. Ian Smith, like South Africa's white leaders, clung to power, and, in 1965, he unilaterally declared Rhodesia's independence from Britain. Later, Zimbabwe also would leave the British Commonwealth.To wrest control from Smith, blacks, led by Robert Mugabe's Zanu party, launched a successful civil war in 1972. Mugabe would exercise dictatorial power in Zimbabwe from 1980 until a military coup led by his vice president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, ousted him in 2017.
Mugabe failed to follow the advice of Nelson Mandela, South Africa's first black president after apartheid. (See Mandela's advice in the earlier post, "How to React When You've Been Wronged."). Doing unto Zimbabwe's white farmers what they had done to blacks, Mugabe's government seized the farms of white owners in 2000. The economic prosperity envisioned by Britain's plan for the Central African Federation disappeared, when whites quickly emigrated. Following the 2017 coup, Mnangagwa left Zimbabwe for a charm offensive designed to lure back white farmers who could feed the estimated 1.1 million to 2.5 million people starving in his country.
To avoid a runoff, a president in Zimbabwe needed to win over 50% of the vote. After a delay, 16 different polling stations reported exactly the same number of votes, and Mr. Mnangagwa won a slim 50.8% majority. His Zanu-PF's party candidates also won 145 of the 210 seats in the National Assembly. Rather than support a Zanu-PF leader who overthrew him, Robert Mugabe, who would die at age 95 on September 5, 2019, backed Nelson Chamisa from the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party, who received 44.3% of the vote, while the remaining votes were split among 21 presidential candidates. Six died, when the military quelled rioting in the capital, Harare, following the announcement of National Assembly votes. MDC voters, who are concentrated in Zimbabwe's cities, called the election unfair and a fraud. When the Constitutional Court rejected MDC's election challenge, members fled the country to escape violence.
Most Zimbabweans live in rural areas where they depend on foreign food donations. By distributing food at rallies, the Zanu-PF military and traditional chiefs intimidate villagers to vote "the right way." Before the 2018 election, Catholic Church leaders attempted to counter fear, apathy, and violence used in past elections by recognizing the need to protect voters and by stressing a vote for the common good was a human right. Sister Mercy Shumbamhini took it upon herself to go to the streets to ask citizens what the common good meant to them. They answered: having enough to eat, health services, a job, a clean environment, dignity, good roads, and security. In other words, they wanted what citizens everywhere want.
Zimbabwe entered a new election cycle starved for food, tourist and export dollars, and business investment to cover unpaid debts to the World Bank and African Development Bank. Initially, Mugabe's incompetent party loyalists, used to collecting bribes in their civil service positions, retained their jobs. But in an effort to demonstrate his determination to stabilize Zimbabwe's faltering economy and gain much needed IMF, British, and Chinese loans, President Mnangagwa replaced cronies with technocrats, including Ncube, his new finance minister.
Funding still remains in doubt, since post-election violence caused lenders to back away from support for the new government. Inflation has soared. Everyone wants payment in US dollars instead of unbacked, government-printed zollars subject to devaluation. Goods, such as generators and building materials, and staples like sugar, maize, and gasoline, are in short supply as customers purchase everything they can before their money is worth even less.
A 5G pilot project in rural Zimbabwe stands as a vestige of a once hopeful new beginning. Offering new hope, however, is the Friendship Bench organization founded by Zimbabwe psychiatrist, Dr. Dixon Chibanda. According to an article in TIME magazine (February 18-25, 2019), Dr. Chibanda's organization grew out of his advice to those with mental problems: Visit grandmothers. Friendship Bench trains grandmothers, who have time and a natural tendency to listen and guide, rather than tell people what to do, to use role playing and other behavior therapies. The medical journal, JAMA, published the positive benefits of the Friendship Bench approach.
A rise in fuel prices on January 12, 2019 again set off protests, sent soldiers into the streets to kill 8, and blocked internet access until January 16. At the same time, President Mnangagwa departed for Moscow, where he agreed to give the Russian company, Alrosa, access to Zimbabwe's diamond mines.
After World War II, Great Britain grouped Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia), Zambia (then Northern Rhodesia), and Malawi (then Nyasaland) into the Central African Federation. London's plan made perfect sense economically, but not politically. Located within Northern Rhodesia, valuable exports from the Copper Belt, shared with the Congo's Katanga Province, already traveled south by rail through Rhodesia to ports in South Africa. Rhodesia, named for Cecil Rhodes, whose guns defeated Chief Lobengula of the Ndebele people who inspired the costumes for Black Panther, had a developed agricultural economy with farms capable of feeding the region and generating tobacco and chinchilla pelt exports. Yet to be mined rich deposits of gold and platinum still exist. Migrant workers from Nyasaland were used to working Rhodesia's farms. They would consult their lists of good and bad employers before agreeing where to work.
The two most prosperous countries in the former federation, Zambia and Zimbabwe, struggle to get back on track. Zambia, one of the African countries that received debt forgiveness in 2005-2006 began spending freely just when copper prices tanked and a new regime increased the number of districts where it could reward leaders with graft. By 2018, Zambia defaulted on a Chinese loan repayment, and immediately Beijing was ready to begin talks to takeover ZESCO, Zambia's electric company, even though President Edgar Lungu claimed the Cabinet would have to approve such a measure. China already owns Zambia's national broadcaster, ZNBC.
Black majorities in Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland broke away from white-ruled Rhodesia. Ian Smith, like South Africa's white leaders, clung to power, and, in 1965, he unilaterally declared Rhodesia's independence from Britain. Later, Zimbabwe also would leave the British Commonwealth.To wrest control from Smith, blacks, led by Robert Mugabe's Zanu party, launched a successful civil war in 1972. Mugabe would exercise dictatorial power in Zimbabwe from 1980 until a military coup led by his vice president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, ousted him in 2017.
Mugabe failed to follow the advice of Nelson Mandela, South Africa's first black president after apartheid. (See Mandela's advice in the earlier post, "How to React When You've Been Wronged."). Doing unto Zimbabwe's white farmers what they had done to blacks, Mugabe's government seized the farms of white owners in 2000. The economic prosperity envisioned by Britain's plan for the Central African Federation disappeared, when whites quickly emigrated. Following the 2017 coup, Mnangagwa left Zimbabwe for a charm offensive designed to lure back white farmers who could feed the estimated 1.1 million to 2.5 million people starving in his country.
To avoid a runoff, a president in Zimbabwe needed to win over 50% of the vote. After a delay, 16 different polling stations reported exactly the same number of votes, and Mr. Mnangagwa won a slim 50.8% majority. His Zanu-PF's party candidates also won 145 of the 210 seats in the National Assembly. Rather than support a Zanu-PF leader who overthrew him, Robert Mugabe, who would die at age 95 on September 5, 2019, backed Nelson Chamisa from the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party, who received 44.3% of the vote, while the remaining votes were split among 21 presidential candidates. Six died, when the military quelled rioting in the capital, Harare, following the announcement of National Assembly votes. MDC voters, who are concentrated in Zimbabwe's cities, called the election unfair and a fraud. When the Constitutional Court rejected MDC's election challenge, members fled the country to escape violence.
Most Zimbabweans live in rural areas where they depend on foreign food donations. By distributing food at rallies, the Zanu-PF military and traditional chiefs intimidate villagers to vote "the right way." Before the 2018 election, Catholic Church leaders attempted to counter fear, apathy, and violence used in past elections by recognizing the need to protect voters and by stressing a vote for the common good was a human right. Sister Mercy Shumbamhini took it upon herself to go to the streets to ask citizens what the common good meant to them. They answered: having enough to eat, health services, a job, a clean environment, dignity, good roads, and security. In other words, they wanted what citizens everywhere want.
Zimbabwe entered a new election cycle starved for food, tourist and export dollars, and business investment to cover unpaid debts to the World Bank and African Development Bank. Initially, Mugabe's incompetent party loyalists, used to collecting bribes in their civil service positions, retained their jobs. But in an effort to demonstrate his determination to stabilize Zimbabwe's faltering economy and gain much needed IMF, British, and Chinese loans, President Mnangagwa replaced cronies with technocrats, including Ncube, his new finance minister.
Funding still remains in doubt, since post-election violence caused lenders to back away from support for the new government. Inflation has soared. Everyone wants payment in US dollars instead of unbacked, government-printed zollars subject to devaluation. Goods, such as generators and building materials, and staples like sugar, maize, and gasoline, are in short supply as customers purchase everything they can before their money is worth even less.
A 5G pilot project in rural Zimbabwe stands as a vestige of a once hopeful new beginning. Offering new hope, however, is the Friendship Bench organization founded by Zimbabwe psychiatrist, Dr. Dixon Chibanda. According to an article in TIME magazine (February 18-25, 2019), Dr. Chibanda's organization grew out of his advice to those with mental problems: Visit grandmothers. Friendship Bench trains grandmothers, who have time and a natural tendency to listen and guide, rather than tell people what to do, to use role playing and other behavior therapies. The medical journal, JAMA, published the positive benefits of the Friendship Bench approach.
Thursday, May 17, 2018
Corrupt Government Turnaround in Angola?
In Angola, President Joao Lourenco attempts to join Muhammadu Buhari in Nigeria, Adama Barrow in The Gambia, and Emmerson Mnanggagwa in Zimbabwe, the new leaders trying to break with a tradition that allowed African rulers to put their own interests ahead of their countries'.
After unseating Jose Eduardo dos Santos, Angola's president for 38 years, Lourenco began a crackdown on corruption rampant among the country's elite. Starting with the former president's rich daughter and son, he removed Isabel as head of the country's national oil and gas company, Sonangol, which exported $640 billion since the end of Angola's civil war in 2002 and charged Jose Filomeno with fraud for attempting to transfer $500 million from the country's $5 billion wealth fund through a London account.
Although the price of crude oil has rebounded from its 2014 low, as Africa's second-largest oil producer after Nigeria, Angola was still left with public debt, mainly to China, hovering between 65% and 80% of GDP, and missing billions, when Lourenco took office. To revive the economy, the new president no longer requires foreign investors to have local partners and asked the International Monetary Fund for advice. Suggested next steps include: an independent audit to discover where revenue from oil and diamond exports went, especially to overseas accounts. Locals share information about the corruption crackdown in Brazil, another former Portuguese country, that has sent former high-level officials to jail.
Additional needed reforms include: elimination of excessive licenses and regulations that provide bribery opportunities for those issuing or waiving them; improving living and health care conditions to reduce the country's high child and maternal mortality rates; stripping courts of political influence; freedom of the press and media, especially to report on corruption; and Angola's first local elections in 2020.
Meanwhile, in Portugal's other former African possession, Mozambique, the continuing 3-year attacks by a group of radical Muslim jihadists resulted in new beheadings in May, 2018.
While African leaders like Rwanda's President Paul Kagame, who led the Tutsi rebels who overthrew the Hulu regime responsible for genocide, and President Pierre Nkurunziza in neighboring Burundi intimidate their opposition and dictate constitutional reforms that enable them to extend their presidential terms to 2034, every indication of a gradual shift to responsible government by the rule of law on the African continent is welcome.
,
After unseating Jose Eduardo dos Santos, Angola's president for 38 years, Lourenco began a crackdown on corruption rampant among the country's elite. Starting with the former president's rich daughter and son, he removed Isabel as head of the country's national oil and gas company, Sonangol, which exported $640 billion since the end of Angola's civil war in 2002 and charged Jose Filomeno with fraud for attempting to transfer $500 million from the country's $5 billion wealth fund through a London account.
Although the price of crude oil has rebounded from its 2014 low, as Africa's second-largest oil producer after Nigeria, Angola was still left with public debt, mainly to China, hovering between 65% and 80% of GDP, and missing billions, when Lourenco took office. To revive the economy, the new president no longer requires foreign investors to have local partners and asked the International Monetary Fund for advice. Suggested next steps include: an independent audit to discover where revenue from oil and diamond exports went, especially to overseas accounts. Locals share information about the corruption crackdown in Brazil, another former Portuguese country, that has sent former high-level officials to jail.
Additional needed reforms include: elimination of excessive licenses and regulations that provide bribery opportunities for those issuing or waiving them; improving living and health care conditions to reduce the country's high child and maternal mortality rates; stripping courts of political influence; freedom of the press and media, especially to report on corruption; and Angola's first local elections in 2020.
Meanwhile, in Portugal's other former African possession, Mozambique, the continuing 3-year attacks by a group of radical Muslim jihadists resulted in new beheadings in May, 2018.
While African leaders like Rwanda's President Paul Kagame, who led the Tutsi rebels who overthrew the Hulu regime responsible for genocide, and President Pierre Nkurunziza in neighboring Burundi intimidate their opposition and dictate constitutional reforms that enable them to extend their presidential terms to 2034, every indication of a gradual shift to responsible government by the rule of law on the African continent is welcome.
,
Saturday, July 9, 2016
Africans Learn to Play the Game
Whether a child is playing Candy Land or trading Pokemon cards, an innocent young child can be tricked into trading a valuable card for one less useful. But as they learn how to play the game this kind of trickery no longer works. Africa has a lot of valuable "cards," and Africa will learn, and is learning, not to be fooled by those who take advantage of corruption, questionable land titles, promises of employment, and pretend friendships.
Since Africa has valuable mineral deposits, the continent has been a target of questionable mining deals. After the Democratic Republic of the Congo seized First Quantum Minerals, the close relationship of an Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation (ENRC) partner with Congo President Joseph Kabila caused First Quantum to question the financial deal that enabled ENRC to purchase its seized copper assets. The legal dispute did not end after Luxembourg-based Eurasian Resources Group (ERG) acquired ENRC and strengthened its position in Africa's copper belt. In fact, ERG's stake in the former ENRC became even more valuable after the Industrial & Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) and China's Export-Import Bank provided $700 million to build the copper and cobalt project that made ERG the world's largest producer of the cobalt used in batteries. The UK's Serious Fraud Office (SFO) continues to investigate ENRC's original deal with the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
In Hia, Ghana, Bishop Afoakwah walked through mounds of dirt and deep puddles to do his own investigation of a gold mine digging a massive pit on church land. Earlier, after one of the mine's earthmoving machines cut an electrical line that left the town without power, Bishop Afoakwah had met with local chiefs. He understood the church held a legal deed to the land that had been donated by a chief for the purpose of building a clinic and nursing school. During his meeting, the bishop learned various chiefs claimed to protect land for other chiefs and, taking advantage of the interwovern land rights and the high per ounce price of gold, a Chinese mine owner provided a payoff to secure a mining concession on the church's land. At the gold mine, workers said a "Mr. Kumar" owned the Hia site. Two Chinese engineers dashed into the bush, when they saw the bishop approaching. Ghana's Minerals Commission only has eight officials to investigate the country's illegal mining and an incomplete database of mining concessions. President Nana Akufo-Addo, who took office in January, 2017, put Ghana's Chinese miners on notice that he intends to enforce laws governing gold mining.
Not only have gold mining operations destroyed agricultural land that has fed local farmers for generations, but heavy machinery has buried and severely injured untrained workers and health-damaging cyanide and mercury used to extract gold from stone have contaminated air and water. Farmers who sell their land to miners enjoy only a short-term gain that lasts a few years. Even if the land is returned to them after the mine is exhausted, the three feet of top soil are destroyed and the poor quality clay soil underneath cannot support a family. Yet, workers who fear losing salaries from mining jobs willingly risk their health and ignore environmental consequences. In fact, miners have thrown rocks at inspectors and even killed a fleeing official by rolling over him with a car.
The path to legal mining in Ghana and in other developing countries is a difficult one. It requires learning "to play the game" without corruption and payoffs, with only those foreign investors willing to train employees and commit to some community development, and with activists like Bishop Afoakwah who are willing to take on lengthy court battles for damages done to the land by illegal miners. In the end, Africans will come to the same conclusion that Cardinal Peter Turkson, archbishop emeritus of Cape Coast, Ghana, did. "It is...unjustifiable for developing countries to fuel the development of richer countries at the cost of their own present and future."
While Ghana continues to sort out land ownership issues affecting local gold miners, a group of 33 illegal gold miners in Uganda spent four years forming the first gold mine the UK's Fairtrade organization certified in Africa. The Syanyonja Artisan Miners Alliance (SAMA) now boasts: 1) a timbered pit unlike the dangerous open pits where dirt walls collapse, when heavy downpours swamp quarries and whole families of miners, and 2) gold extraction processes that employ proper handling of mercury and cyanide. SAMA's certified gold mine offers small-scale coop members the prospect of premium prices, savings, a local health center, and subsidized school fees. Now that the association pays taxes SAMA members find they have more government influence. SAMA also benefits from the "I Do" campaign sponsored by the Fairtrade Foundation's focus on commodities campaign in the UK, which alerts couples to choose Fairtrade Gold wedding bands.
Earlier posts involving Africa's resources include:
Since Africa has valuable mineral deposits, the continent has been a target of questionable mining deals. After the Democratic Republic of the Congo seized First Quantum Minerals, the close relationship of an Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation (ENRC) partner with Congo President Joseph Kabila caused First Quantum to question the financial deal that enabled ENRC to purchase its seized copper assets. The legal dispute did not end after Luxembourg-based Eurasian Resources Group (ERG) acquired ENRC and strengthened its position in Africa's copper belt. In fact, ERG's stake in the former ENRC became even more valuable after the Industrial & Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) and China's Export-Import Bank provided $700 million to build the copper and cobalt project that made ERG the world's largest producer of the cobalt used in batteries. The UK's Serious Fraud Office (SFO) continues to investigate ENRC's original deal with the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
In Hia, Ghana, Bishop Afoakwah walked through mounds of dirt and deep puddles to do his own investigation of a gold mine digging a massive pit on church land. Earlier, after one of the mine's earthmoving machines cut an electrical line that left the town without power, Bishop Afoakwah had met with local chiefs. He understood the church held a legal deed to the land that had been donated by a chief for the purpose of building a clinic and nursing school. During his meeting, the bishop learned various chiefs claimed to protect land for other chiefs and, taking advantage of the interwovern land rights and the high per ounce price of gold, a Chinese mine owner provided a payoff to secure a mining concession on the church's land. At the gold mine, workers said a "Mr. Kumar" owned the Hia site. Two Chinese engineers dashed into the bush, when they saw the bishop approaching. Ghana's Minerals Commission only has eight officials to investigate the country's illegal mining and an incomplete database of mining concessions. President Nana Akufo-Addo, who took office in January, 2017, put Ghana's Chinese miners on notice that he intends to enforce laws governing gold mining.
Not only have gold mining operations destroyed agricultural land that has fed local farmers for generations, but heavy machinery has buried and severely injured untrained workers and health-damaging cyanide and mercury used to extract gold from stone have contaminated air and water. Farmers who sell their land to miners enjoy only a short-term gain that lasts a few years. Even if the land is returned to them after the mine is exhausted, the three feet of top soil are destroyed and the poor quality clay soil underneath cannot support a family. Yet, workers who fear losing salaries from mining jobs willingly risk their health and ignore environmental consequences. In fact, miners have thrown rocks at inspectors and even killed a fleeing official by rolling over him with a car.
The path to legal mining in Ghana and in other developing countries is a difficult one. It requires learning "to play the game" without corruption and payoffs, with only those foreign investors willing to train employees and commit to some community development, and with activists like Bishop Afoakwah who are willing to take on lengthy court battles for damages done to the land by illegal miners. In the end, Africans will come to the same conclusion that Cardinal Peter Turkson, archbishop emeritus of Cape Coast, Ghana, did. "It is...unjustifiable for developing countries to fuel the development of richer countries at the cost of their own present and future."
While Ghana continues to sort out land ownership issues affecting local gold miners, a group of 33 illegal gold miners in Uganda spent four years forming the first gold mine the UK's Fairtrade organization certified in Africa. The Syanyonja Artisan Miners Alliance (SAMA) now boasts: 1) a timbered pit unlike the dangerous open pits where dirt walls collapse, when heavy downpours swamp quarries and whole families of miners, and 2) gold extraction processes that employ proper handling of mercury and cyanide. SAMA's certified gold mine offers small-scale coop members the prospect of premium prices, savings, a local health center, and subsidized school fees. Now that the association pays taxes SAMA members find they have more government influence. SAMA also benefits from the "I Do" campaign sponsored by the Fairtrade Foundation's focus on commodities campaign in the UK, which alerts couples to choose Fairtrade Gold wedding bands.
Earlier posts involving Africa's resources include:
- Wood: Don't Take Any Wooden Nickels, Uncover the Economic Value of Wood
- Coffee: Invest in Africa's Agricultural Future; Coffee Prices Going Up; Allowances Going Down?
- Cocoa: Become A Discriminating Chocolate Consumer, Chocolate Tasting Party and More; Chocolate's Sweet Deals
- Palm oil: Can Small Farms End Poverty?
- Oil: Nigeria's New Beginning
- Diamonds: Diamond Flaws
Sunday, March 20, 2016
Diamond Flaws
President Obama will visit one kind of diamond, when he takes in a baseball game in Cuba this week.* And June brides have a many-faceted diamond on their ring fingers. For the independent miners paying the violent armed groups who control access to the rivers in the Central African Republic (CAR), the diamonds they find represent a treacherous way to scrape out a living.
These miners are far removed from those who wear the diamonds and gold found in the CAR, Zimbabwe, Burkina Faso, Angola, and Mexico and the precious stones from Afghanistan and Myanmar (Burma) and from those who rely on the mobile phones, cars, computers, and other products that contain tungsten from Colombia and tantalum, tungsten, and cobalt from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Before these raw materials become part of finished products, they change hands often in secretive and poorly regulated supply chains that span the globe.
The UN, OECD, US, and EU all are taking measures to pressure companies to ask their mineral suppliers more questions and to notice warning signs. Berne Declaration, a Swiss non-governmental organization (NGO), knew Togo produced little or no gold, yet Swiss companies thought they were buying gold that originated there. Instead, their gold was coming from Burkina Faso. True to its advertising, De Beers is assuring consumers "a diamond is forever" by launching a pilot program to buy diamond jewelry and loose diamonds for resale, thereby reducing the need to buy new diamonds from unknown sources.
Not only is there growing concern about the human rights abuses associated with the dangers independent miners face, but conflict in the world's poorest countries relies in part on financing from selling licenses to miners, collecting tolls on transportation routes to the mines, taxes, and mineral sales. In Zimbabwe, even the national security forces and secret police supplement their government budgets and escape government oversight by engaging in the mineral trade.
There are money and jobs enough in the mineral trade for both miners and manufacturers to benefit by behaving responsibly.
*See the earlier post, "Good News from Cuba," for background on President Obama's trip to Cuba.
These miners are far removed from those who wear the diamonds and gold found in the CAR, Zimbabwe, Burkina Faso, Angola, and Mexico and the precious stones from Afghanistan and Myanmar (Burma) and from those who rely on the mobile phones, cars, computers, and other products that contain tungsten from Colombia and tantalum, tungsten, and cobalt from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Before these raw materials become part of finished products, they change hands often in secretive and poorly regulated supply chains that span the globe.
The UN, OECD, US, and EU all are taking measures to pressure companies to ask their mineral suppliers more questions and to notice warning signs. Berne Declaration, a Swiss non-governmental organization (NGO), knew Togo produced little or no gold, yet Swiss companies thought they were buying gold that originated there. Instead, their gold was coming from Burkina Faso. True to its advertising, De Beers is assuring consumers "a diamond is forever" by launching a pilot program to buy diamond jewelry and loose diamonds for resale, thereby reducing the need to buy new diamonds from unknown sources.
Not only is there growing concern about the human rights abuses associated with the dangers independent miners face, but conflict in the world's poorest countries relies in part on financing from selling licenses to miners, collecting tolls on transportation routes to the mines, taxes, and mineral sales. In Zimbabwe, even the national security forces and secret police supplement their government budgets and escape government oversight by engaging in the mineral trade.
There are money and jobs enough in the mineral trade for both miners and manufacturers to benefit by behaving responsibly.
*See the earlier post, "Good News from Cuba," for background on President Obama's trip to Cuba.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)