Ugandan government officials attended a five-day special capacity-building training programme to provide the East African nation’s officials with the requisite skills to negotiate mining agreements.

Speaking at the October 2 closing ceremony of the Mineral Wealth Conference, in Kampala, Uganda, Prime Minister Ruhakana Rugunda praised the African Legal Support Facility (ALSF) for facilitating the training, highlighting that strengthened human capacity was critical to the country’s efforts to increase the benefits from the extraction of minerals.

ALSF, an affiliate of the African Development Bank, hosted the training, which was attended by government representatives consisting of regulators, lawyers and professional services practitioners from different line Ministries.

The topics covered included understanding mineral rights, land access and mine development; environmental and social issues; and regulatory impact assessments.

According to ALSF legal counsel Tongayi Masvikwa, the workshop was designed to break down the anatomy of mining agreements and focus on the negotiable aspects of such agreements.

He added that the aim was to build the legal capacity of senior representatives of State Ministries and other institutions involved in the negotiation of mining agreements.

Speaking at the workshop, South Africa’s African National Congress treasurer-general, Zweli Mkhize, stated that the challenge for African governments was to look for better ways to manage the existing resources on the continent.

Uganda Chamber of Mines and Petroleum chairperson Elly Karuhanga emphasised that agreements in the extractives sector required competence in negotiating concessions that were beneficial to African governments. “We need a win-win situation where government and the private sector benefit from their investment,” he asserted.

Outlining the ALSF’s objectives, Masvikwa stated that the current interventions of the organisation aimed to help bridge the gaps in legal capabilities and thereby level the negotiating playing field to further the economic development of African States. He explained that the expected impact of the capacity-building programme was that the Ugandan government would have increased ability to protect its legal rights and significantly improve the development impact of the mining agreements into which it entered.