The Director of Legal Affairs at the Ministry of Mineral Resources and Energy (MIREME), José Amigos, said this Wednesday, 28 June, in Maputo, during the opening of the conference on “Governance of Extractive Resources and Conflicts”, that Mozambique appears as the third in the world with an acceptable governance of natural resources.
The governor said that his ministry met with the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI) in June last year, in Gaza province, with the main aim of preparing the documents for the evaluation process of Mozambique’s permanence in the group of countries that are part of the initiative. “This joint work had the merit of leading the country to one of the highest scores, that is, Mozambique is the third country in the world with a high degree of compliance with the standards of the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative, behind Norway,” he pointed out.
“This result is further proof that, although there are challenges, Mozambicans have known how to carry out necessary actions aimed at making natural resources a blessing for the development of the country, through active and concerted participation between the different actors, and in this regard, we take this opportunity to salute the cooperation partners, who through World Bank funds, financed the EITI five-year plan of activities, because without these resources, it would not have been possible to achieve the results,” added Amigos.
Notwithstanding the progress made so far, there are challenges that remain on the issue of good governance of natural resources. “Mozambique’s validation report carries with it recommendations and corrective actions that serve as the basis of our three-year plan and should be our collective guiding compass. This way, we can highlight the need for improvement in the articulation of the civil society platform regarding information sharing,” noted Amigos.
On the same occasion, the researcher from the Institute for Social and Economic Studies (IESE), Sérgio Chichava made a presentation on conflicts linked to the management of mineral resources in the country, talking about the factors that lead communities to demonstrate against companies.
“In Inhambane, we managed to do a survey, focusing on SASOL, where it is considered that the activities of this South African multinational, currently produce more risks for the local communities and less benefits. Local business people, for example, complain about the exclusion of Mozambican companies when contracting for the supply of services and say that the benefits go to foreign companies,” he said, adding that “the fishermen also complain about the company, because they think that the multinational’s activities have contributed to the extinction of certain species. And local young people complain about the fact that they are not privileged in access to employment.
As well as Inhambane province, the IESE researcher spoke about Cabo Delgado province, about which he said that “there is a negative perception of the performance of some political figures linked to the ruling party, and these figures often come from that part of the country. These figures are seen as having seized almost all the most important natural resources of the province, so we are talking about rubies, gold and large portions of land around the beaches”.
Chichava, among other aspects, highlighted that there are recurring conflicts in the mining areas between the exploration companies and the local communities, especially in areas with an abundance of rubies and gold, and some of the companies involved in the conflicts are owned by local political figures.
