Africa, for over two centuries, has been victim to a legacy of resource exploitation.
In February of this year, a tailings dam at Sino-Metals Leach Zambia collapsed.
According to an independent audit by Drizit Zambia Ltd. nearly 1.5 million tons of contaminated waste was released into the Kafue River system and surrounding land; about t30 times more than the amount Sino-Metals initially stated.
High volumes of lead, arsenic, cyanide and heavy metals have been discovered at dangerous levels in a release of toxins that have covered the ecosystems on which over 50 per cent of Zambians rely.
These pollutants have devastated the natural environment, decimated farmland, and pose significant health risks to communities across the country.
In the last two decades, resource-rich Africa has witnessed the continual expansion of China’s economic activities.
Africa’s copper belt, consisting of Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is one such example.
According to the Wilson Centre, in the DRC, China now owns 72 per cent of the copper and cobalt mines, two resources critical in the transition to renewable energies, with the Tenke Fungurume mine alone, producing 12 per cent of the world’s cobalt.
Heavy downside
Many African states continue to welcome the much-needed revenue, infrastructure, and skills development that such resource extraction deals can provide.
What has become increasingly evident, however, is that the financial upside carries with it a very heavy downside, where inevitably, it is Africa’s vulnerable communities and ecosystems that have ended up bearing the heaviest burden with unseen environmental costs.
China consistently promotes its resource extraction partnerships as ‘win-win,’ yet while there are numerous financial and infrastructural advantages to be gained from their cooperation, many examples point to unseen and unaddressed costs from their collaboration.
In the DRC, illegal mining has had huge socio-environmental impacts across the eastern region of the country.
Meanwhile, in Ghana, the Government has taken strong actions, deploying military task forces, conducting raids,making arrests, and effecting deportations to combat illegal mining activities in parts of the country, where the effects of deforestation is already palpable.
Resource extraction is a vital component of Africa’s future economic growth, and many African states require partners with the financial and technical heft to support and develop their resource-based industries.
Some countries have the ways and means to be such a partner.
But in many cases, African resources are being extracted under conditions that appear reckless.
Raising concerns of whether adequate due respect is being paid to host nations and the lands on which their people’s lives and livelihoods depend.
Most at risk, is the erosion of any long-term benefits for African nations in these partnerships, theoretically.
The trusted partners that African nations need in this sector must build growth through long-term planning and respectful collaboration.
This should prioritise the development of domestic skills and ensure the protection of fair labour, traditions and ecosystems.
Currently, the reverse is what prevails.
The failure of Africa’spartners to operate to the highest standards thus reducing the environmental and socioeconomic impact of their resource extraction, has not become a side effect of their economic models, but a feature of it.
Earlier this year, an illegal gold mine in Mali collapsed, killing more than 40 people.
According to AFP and the BBC, the collapse happened at a facility which reports imply was left abandoned in an unsafe condition.
Many of these mines operate with little — if any — health and safety rules and regulations, with operators, who when challenged, appear indifferent to the consequences of their actions.
Africa, for over two centuries, has been victim to this legacy of resource exploitation, human-rights abuses, and environmental mismanagement.
And although today it is China in the spotlight, for much of the 19th and 20th centuries it was colonial powers and transnational mining companies that were responsible for calamitous atrocities.
Across the board, entities have exploited Africa’s weak institutions, policy deficiencies, and lack of regulatory enforcement.
But these factors are common to nearly all of the developing world, and are factors which partners, rather than exploiting, should be working to address.
There are countless partners African governments can select from for the extraction of their natural reserves.
All of them clamouring for Africa’s precious metals and rare earths, all of them driven to advance their own economies and technologies for the likes of electric vehicles and renewable technology.
However, the power to negotiate these deals should sit with Africa’s governments, not their partners.
The owners of these resources should have the monopoly over them, not the latter.
Partners should be facilitating an extractive-model that promotes an ascent to the top, not a descent to the bottom.
African nations should themselves be the ones to dictate how African resources are extracted, and it should be made clear that foreign investors who stray from pre-determined principles, do so at their own peril.
Stand up
Across Africa, governments must start standing up for their people and their natural environments.
However, as long as cash-strapped governments are offered deals with terms that seem too good to be true, this will be exceptionally difficult to accomplish.
What is required, is for African leaders to take a long-term view, and select partners that will operate on a basis of respect for future development and African sovereignty. Africa’s partners should be key enablers for this model of growth.
It is time for African leaders to adopt an Africa-centric approach towards its resource-based partnerships, and to not forsake the generations of tomorrow, for those of today.
If they do not, African countries will set themselves on a path that mirrors their colonial past.
The writer is with International environmental relations
Pan-Africa podcast Panel 54
