Third World Network to host African Civil Society on Mining Vision

Third World Network will from next Tuesday host an African-wide civil society conference to improve and deepen knowledge on the African Mining Vision (AMV).

The Vision formulated by African nations puts the continent’s long term and broad development objectives at the heart of all policy making concerned with mineral extraction.

It was adopted by Heads of State at the February 2009 AU summit following the October 2008 meeting of African Ministers responsible for Mineral Resources Development.

The AMV sets out how mining can be used to drive continental development.

The four-day conference slated for June 26-June 29 will also be used to make input and contributions to the business plan of the African Minerals Development Centre (AMDC), the coordination body for the implementation of decisions towards the realisation of the Mining Vision.

It also aims at generating common understanding about opportunities and challenges around the continent’s mining reform agenda.

Fifty participants drawn from representatives of African civil society networks, coalitions and social constituencies from labour movements, mining affected groups, artisanal and small scale mining organisations, policy officials, and gender groups would attend the meeting.

Briefing journalists in Accra on Wednesday, Dr. Yao Graham, Co-odinator of TWN said the vision set out to tackle the widespread poverty in most African countries despite years of exploitation of mineral resources.

He said the vision did not only seek to deal with only the fiscal policies but also a broad range of issues including integration of artisanal mining, community livelihoods and establishing the necessary linkages to enhance the benefits of the resource to mineral-rich countries.

Dr. Graham said the vision was recognition by governments' of what civil society groups had said over the years that the mining regimes must be reviewed if it was to respond to the needs of the people.

The meeting would deal with issues such as managing and protecting community livelihood, human rights and the environment in mining areas, the labour regimes with large scale mining, mineral commodity dependence, fiscal policies and the transformation of the mineral economy.

Dr. Graham said the conference is expected to conclude with an adoption of a plan of common position for advocacy on reform agenda as well as a set of recommendations to improve the effective functioning of the Business Plan of the AMDC.

The conference is being organised in collaboration with the Pan-African Extractive sector Network, African Initiative on Mining, Environment and Society and the International Trade Union Confederation, Africa.**