The African Mining Legislation Atlas (AMLA) – a free, online platform developed by the World Bank – will be handed over to the African Development Bank’s (AfDB’s) African Legal Support Facility (ALSF) on July 1, and the ALSF will then be officially responsible for the day-to-day running of the project, says AMLA project leader Nneoma Veronica Nwogu.

The ALSF, which has been supporting African governments in the negotiation of complex commercial transactions since 2010, also builds, in turn, on the work of the project facilitation committee (PFC).

The reason for the transfer is that the project’s design is intended to facilitate and affirm on-ground technical expertise, thereby resulting in long-term management of the platform in the region with the support of the project’s associated commitees.

Nwogu tells Mining Weekly that the PFC, which comprises the African Union Commission (AUC), the World Bank and the ALSF, will act as a steering committee for the AMLA to ensure its strategic objectives are met. The World Bank is also currently undertaking training of the AMLA’s new incoming secretariat as part of the transition process.

“The AUC, the World Bank and the ALSF have been core members of the [AMLA] project since its inception in 2013 and therefore have in-depth understanding of the project and its objectives,” she points out.

Nwogu also notes that the project implementing consortium’s (PIC’s) mandate is to render technical advice to the ALSF – the African entity that will manage the project – once it has been handed over by the World Bank to ensure its continued sustainability.

The PIC comprises regional and global entities, such as law firms Latham & Watkins, Norton Rose Fulbright, Werksmans, VdAcademia; institutions of higher learning the University of Dundee, the University of Pretoria, Universidade Eduardo Mondlane and Cheikh Anta Diop University; nonprofit organisations Natural Resource Governance Institute and Women in Mining Africa; global provider of online legal information sources LexisNexis; applied research centre the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment; and Institut de Droit Communautaire, among others.

Nwogu says that the PIC has been constituted and its first meeting was held in Ghana in December. She says that, during the meeting, a five-year sustainability plan for the AMLA was drafted, which is expected to be endorsed soon by the PIC.

The project’s objective is to support African countries by ensuring maximum mineral resource benefits through the promotion of transparency and accessibility, which will be facilitated by comparing African jurisdictions’ mining laws and, in turn, facilitating the preparation, revision and implementation of mining laws.

It further seeks to provide a living database that will catalyse research and policy debates on legal and regulatory issues and promote the development of local legal expertise on mining laws.

She highlights that the platform facilitates access to information not only for potential investors but also for all stakeholder groups, including governments and civil society organisations that may not have the resources or capacities to otherwise access this important information.
Nwogu points out that the AMLA platform, which is a free online “one-stop resource” for Africa’s mining legal framework (mining codes, regulations and related legislation), has interactive features to provide comparative data.

Further, she comments that the production of the AMLA’s guiding template, an annotated document consisting of over 200 topics on each country, also carries a menu of legislative solutions available to assist countries in the preparation or revision of their mining laws.

Nwogu says that the platform also aims to build capacities through training (on-ground and remotely) of African legal professionals in the use of the platform and on general issues in mining law.

She remarks that, in some cases, the challenges around collecting information were not a result of countries trying to intentionally hide this information, but rather owing to the lack of value placed on ensuring this data was readily available to the people and institutions that needed it.

“Countries that lack civil and administrative capacities are just not capable of collating and storing this data. It is in these African countries where the AMLA is most important,” Nwogu emphasises.

She elaborates that the AMLA empowers such countries – and does not judge them on their deficiencies – to ensure that stakeholders (locally, regionally and worldwide) are provided with information pertaining to countries’ mineral resources to make informed decisions regarding the development of potential resources.

To develop specialised expertise on the continent, the project has established a legal research team (LRT). The LRT is made up of advanced law students selected from various African universities from 19 countries, representing all five regions of the continent.

Nwogu explains that the role of the LRT is to populate the AMLA platform by locating mining and related legislation, and conducting comparative research on specific topics across different countries’ mining legislation under the guidance of the quality review team comprised of senior specialists in the sector.

She informs Mining Weekly that the programme has, to date, trained about 70 students in total, with 34 of these students having joined the LRT itself. Nwogu points out that many of these students have gone on to become legal experts, consultants and even mining law lecturers in their home countries, which has assisted in strengthening their countries’ mining legal systems.

She adds that there are also a number of AMLA training programmes that are regularly run at universities throughout Africa, which provide “vital” information and encourage the sharing of knowledge about how mining legislation and practices are progressing on the continent.

“Government Ministers have spoken very favourably about the AMLA and its impact on improving the mining codes, legislation, rules and regulations in their respective countries. It is my hope that this will continue to be the case and that the transparency of Africa’s mining sector laws will be strengthened in line with the project’s founding objectives,” Nwogu concludes.