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Outward African image needs changing to court foreign investment

8th March 2016

By: Henry Lazenby

Creamer Media Deputy Editor: North America

  

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TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Africa has a negative outward image, partly owing to the ignorance of outsiders, but mainly owing to a lack of cohesive strategies to tell the positive news about the continent.

Speaking during a panel hosted by MineAfrica and the Canada-Southern Africa Chamber of Business, which explored aspects of the African Mining Vision (AMV) and what African countries were doing to encourage investment in the current market, Montero Mining and Exploration president and CEO Dr Tony Harwood stressed that Africa needed to overcome the negative perception about doing business on the continent, in order to thrive.

He said that countries needed to take better care of foreign investors, especially in the mining sector.

Mining, because it was a long-term commitment, could do a lot to lift countries out of poverty. Such investors often became champions in their own right for the countries they were investing in, which could lead to an increased influx of foreign investments stemming from improved international sentiment.

He explained that whether an investor was going to be happy in a country, started the moment the person arrived at the local airport – the state of infrastructure, the attitude of employees; such factors all contributed to the immediate sense of whether investors would want to invest in a country or not.

“The AMV could benefit from changing this image. The continent needs to overcome this and address the image portrayed,” he said.

DOMESTICATING THE AMV
Rwandan Minister of State for Mining Evode Imena said the rate at which the AMV was being implemented left much to be desired.

“We can’t be proud of the rate at which the AMV is being implemented. We need to speed up the domestication of the policy. While African countries share about 99% of the same problems, the answers are probably going to be the same,” he noted.

“You don’t need capital investment in order to change the attitude of your agents. Mining in Africa will never change without foreign direct investment. Infrastructure initiatives help to move the needle forward,” he continued.

At about the same time that signals were starting to show that commodity markets were collapsing in 2009, African States were realising the need for a more comprehensive blueprint to achieve sustainable development of natural resources. Despite the abundance of natural resources, and rapid growth in the African resources sector, the industry was found to not contribute substantially to host countries’ economic development.

For this reason, the African Mining Vision was adopted by the African Union in 2009, and was translated into an action plan in 2011. In 2013, at the African Union ministerial summit in Maputo, Mozambique, the African Minerals Development Centre was created, which had published a booklet to guide States on how to domesticate the AMV.

African Minerals Development Centre acting coordinator Dr Kojo Busia explained that the action plan hinged on seven critical points: its acting as a guide for States to implement predictable and sustainable fiscal regimes and revenue management; to address gaps in geographic information; to guide governance and the decision-making process; to create a platform for artisanal mining; to create linkages to economic diversification such as infrastructure and energy; by building institutional capacity; and to coordinate communication and advocacy.

Edited by Creamer Media Reporter

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