Africa My Vision!

Is it worth it??

2009-06-26T09:59:00.000+02:00

The Price of Gold!!

2009-06-25T20:39:00.000+02:00

The Price of Gold!... is it worth it?

2009-06-25T19:31:00.000+02:00

On Wednesday night the Channel Ten had a special broadcast on human rights violations that have been going on since early 2003 in some of the rural villages on Tanzania. These gross human rights violations due to gold mining ranged from killings of people and animals burnt by acidic water; destruction of farming land and vegetation to polution of the environment due to dumping of chemical waste from the mining operations.

Since the mining operations started in the northern regions of the country, the local communities have experienced an unending cycle of catastrophe. They were since forcefully removed from the homes by the state police, houses demolished and people burried alive in that process. Those that remained continue to suffer all sorts of destructions in favour of mining operations that benefit none of them. The government is silent!

For sometime mining dumps have been pilling up at the back of their homes; rivers being polluted living them, their animals and crops without water to survive and many of those who unknowingly used the rivers and wells were burnt to death; some suffered severe skin disorders due to the acid that also distroyed most vegetations. The cattle and dogs that drank the water lost their skins while some of the goats burnt their limbs off by stepping on the water.

Unfortunately all these cries have fallen into deaf ears. For years now there has never been satisfactory measures taken by government to respond to these issues and the mining operations have gained more power to do what they do claiming that they have not signed any agreement with the people nor their legal representative, hence won't account for anything. The corporations continue to export gold work billions of dollars while the tax they pay to the country cannot even build a single village they distroyed and most notably their staff earn salaries that could take upto 500years for an average Tanzanian to accumulate!

Now objectively looking at all these injustices....is it really worth it for this country to have these operations?? What is the benefit of investments if their presence in a community is nothing but destruction of peoples lives?? Is the price of gold more valuable than human lives?? If the nation would closely look at its suffering like this.....is it really worth it??

Tanzanians is this the price you are willing to pay? On who's cost? It really worth it??

Tanzanians are more cursed than blessed!!

2009-06-25T17:44:00.000+02:00

Being born and bread in a village full of minerals is not a blessing for the people of Tanzania. For the majority of people in this country, minerals have for years become a guaranteed source of pain, destruction of lives and the environment than the Creator originally intended them to be. This is the life and future of each Tanzanian child that is born in the villages surrounded by gold rich mines.

Since the discovery of gold in Tanzania about a decade ago, giant mining companies from both North and Southern Countries have benefitted immensely in the operations while thousands of indigenous subsistence miners have gone jobless. In addition to being brutally evicted from their homes and buried alive, other additional costs that the locals have borne in places like Shinyanga are huge holes in the environment which have translated into a series of unaccountable mining dumps; polluted rivers; destruction of vegetation and alleged corruption in government which has been clearly seen in the lack of transparency to contracts awarded to mining companies and tax revenues.

Between the years 1995 - 2005 gold exports from Tanzania have increased to US$2.54 billion with AngloGold Ashanti taking US$1.54 billion in their previous financial year while giving back a mean 3% royalty tax for the huge costs that the people of Tanzania continue to suffer with. Local organisations like the Policy Forum (PF); Lawyer’s Environmental Action Team (LEAT) and other have taken up the people’s matter to themselves while being backed by the Christian Council of Tanzania (CCT); Tanzania Episcopal Conference (TEC) and Baraza Kuu la Waislamu Tanzania but to this day the plight of the people in these villages remain and their cries have fallen in deaf ears. Many believe that the gold revenues in Tanzania could be able to solve most of the problems facing the country and be able to finance the National Strategy for Growth and Reduction of Poverty (MKUKUTA). Some analysts have predicted a tripling income in the mining sector from $100million to $300million by 2014 while veteran activists for economic justice differ with this as just another government-shut-your-mouth incentive compared to what the mining companies make from the country’s minerals.

Today on the Tanzanian Budget Day, the World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors has approved an International Development Association credit of USD190 million to support implementation of Tanzania’s National Strategy for Growth and Reduction of Poverty (MKUKUTA). This loan aimed at financing the government budget was reduced from an initial indicative of USD200 million and will unfortunately be spent without transparency to the rest of the population as it has always been with other revenue generating means like tax revenues.

Despite a decline in Tanzania’s ranking on the Cost of Doing Business and on the World Competitiveness indicators; the Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability assessment and the UK Department for International Development’s Public Financial Management risk assessment having downgraded Tanzania; its ranking by Transparency International fallen; and the 2008 Country Policy and Institutional Assessment rating, though still relatively high at 3.8, has also been revised downward by 0.1 points. Progress on the government’s main private sector development and public financial reform programs has been rated unsatisfactory by development partners as have two other core reforms, namely legal and local government. (Business Desk: 11 June 2009).

“Every year we see increased poverty and under development while parliamentarians get new German imported cars with the old ones still in excellent conditions. This clearly shows that the where the heart of government is...not in the people but themselves.” said one of the citizens.

As one of the custodians of the Millenium Development Goals which the MKUKUTA programme seeks to achieve, Tanzania is expected to deliver on its undertakings by 2015 but with the huge dependency in debt from World Banks, of which most will go to politicians luxurious benefits, none of these goals will be met. Minerals in Tanzania are not for Tanzanians benefit but the countries and their citizens whose mining companies operate in Tanzania including Britain; Canada and South Africa. As indicated by the Mining Agreement between Pangea Minerals Limited (a subsidiary of Barrick Gold Corporation) and the government of the Republic of Tanzania for the development of a gold mine at Buzwagi, Kahama, ”...it is of extraordinary benefit to Barrick while offering decidedly little to Tanzanians.

The questions still remains as to whether the current cut in the mining sector is fair to the ordinary Tanzanian citizen whom on average would take 500years to make up the US$9.4million salary package, a Barrick CEO Greg Wilkins earns. Can the country be able to provide enough and adequate basic services for its citizens? Can mining ever be accountable if the legislation favours them more than the citizens that voted the government to office? Will the revenue collected ever be able to repair the damages and costs borne by the local communities if the mines can’t even allow them the opportunity to generate income by provide services to them, more over compensating them for their loss of lives.

Are foreign loans as granted today by the World Bank the way to meet the needs of the ordinary Tanzanian? Are they not a guarantee of a continous cycle of debt that even the yet to be born child will have a burden to pay? Are we as a country so kind and generous to give away what is supposed to sustain our children and our future generations – our only inheritance – to rich countries in exchange for loss of lives and poverty? Or we just didn’t see it coming?

Am intersted to know!

Africa's misery...

2009-05-21T22:09:00.000+02:00

A Golden Opportunity?

2009-05-21T21:56:00.000+02:00

By Damon Vis
-Dunbar21 November 2008

Tanzania is losing large amounts of money from foreign investment in the mining sector due to low royalty rates and generous tax exemptions, while contracts with so-called stabilization clauses have locked the government into this tax regime for up to 50 years, says a report published by a consortium of church-based groups. Tanzania, Africa’s third largest producer of gold, but also one of the world’s poorest countries, has seen its gold mining industry swell in the last ten years thanks to the introduction of a variety of investment incentives. But Tanzania’s mineral investment laws are too liberal, robbing the country of potential revenue, argue the authors of A Golden Opportunity? How Tanzania is Failing to Benefit from Gold Mining.

In written responses to the report, two mining companies operating in Tanzania have countered that Tanzania’s investment incentives are “conventional” and “essential” if the country is to draw long-term investment to the mining sector. The report takes aim at a host of tax incentives—allowing companies to offset a 100% of their capital expenditure, for example—that the authors argue amount to hidden subsidies. Higher royalties are also recommended. The government currently levies a 3% royalty on gold. If the rate was 5%, the same that Botswana charges, Tanzania would have netted an extra US$ 58 million over the last five years, estimate the report’s authors, Mark Curtis and Tundu Lissu. The report also alleges that mining companies have evaded taxes, pointing to a 2003 audit commissioned by the government of Tanzania from the American firm Alex Stewart Assayers Government Business Corporation (ASA). The audit has not been made public, and the audited mining companies say that they have not seen the final report, although a copy has been leaked to the news media and was obtained by Kurtis and Lissu. According to Kurtis and Lissu’s description of auditor’s report, four companies are alleged to have over-declared losses by US$502 million between 1999 and 2003, representing a loss in government revenue of US$132.5 million. The auditors also reportedly complained of thousands of missing documents and accused the mining companies of frustrating their investigation. Tanzania’s government revenue from mining has been placed at between US$13 to US$36 million a year by various sources.

The authors of the report say it is likely about US$ 28 million, the figure provided by the Tanzanian Chamber of Mines. Notably, efforts to boost government revenue in the mining sector may be hampered by the contracts that Tanzania has negotiated with foreign mining companies. While these contracts are normally kept confidential, occasionally they are leaked. Such was the case with a 2007 agreement with Barrick, a Canadian company, for a new mining operation in the north of Tanzania.According to Kurtis and Lissu, the contract commits the government to maintain current tax levels for 25 years, with an option for the company to renew for another 25 years on the same terms. Compensation is guaranteed under contract should the government change the terms in such a way that the company is put “in a worse off situation”. Barrick, the mining company, has dismissed Kurtis and Lissu’s report as “basically an advocacy piece by a hired Tanzanian anti-mining activist which encourages the Government of Tanzania to extract much higher taxes, rents, and royalties from Tanzania’s nascent gold mining industry irrespective of its impacts on that industry, or the benefits that flow from it.”

In a three-page response sent to the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, Barrick says that Tanzania’s nascent mining industry has required large upfront investments from foreign mining companies, suggesting that the investment incentives have been necessary to attract foreign capital. Nor are Tanzania’s mineral investment laws out of step with the rest of the world, said Barrick, adding that Tanzania’s royalty rate is higher than those imposed in Australia, Canada, the United States, South Africa and China—the world’s largest gold producers. At a time when the mining industry is feeling the effect of lower mineral prices, “the authors proposed changes in law to make the Tanzanian investment climate vastly less attractive couldn’t possible be any insensitive to global economic reality,” wrote Barrick.

A Golden Opportunity? How Tanzania is Failing to Benefit From Gold Mining was commissioned by the Christian Council of Tanzania, the National Council of Muslims in Tanzania, the Tanzania Episcopal Conference, and financed by Norwegian Church Aid and Christian Aid.

A link to the report, as well as responses from the mining companies Barrick and Anglogold Ashanti, are available from the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre at http://www.business-humanrights.org/Links/Repository/608500

Background

2009-05-21T21:30:00.000+02:00

It's a long, complicated issue that speaks to injustices done by the North to Africa and how rather than benefiting from their land and rich natural resources, Africans continues to suffer all sorts of social ills like poverty, conflict, environmental destruction and sicknesses caused by the mining activities. On one hand the European capitalists are abusing and looting everything that they come across here from surface level to underground since their arrival in Africa and still continue to do that without care, respect and mindful of future damages. In a way they began with slave trade and destruction of human dignity to what has now become economic slavery and destruction of the continent in the form of investments...that unfortunately don't benefit us in any way. There's nothing for us as civilization itself is a way of upliftingthe North through consumption of their products and services by Africans - their biggest and growing market.

Norway as one of the richest countries due to its oil reserves since its discovery in the early 1940s, has put its citizens at the centre of everything and thus managed to build the country, excellent infrastructure and social security for its people.........WHY CAN'T IT BE THE SAME FOR EACH OF THE AFRICAN COUNTRIES??
As part of their efforts to contribute in the fight against injustices in the world they have through many platforms and ways formulated partnerships with other countries in an effort to mobilizeand lobby for the restructuring of the Extractive Industries and Ecological Debt in East and West Africa. The attached reports will just give youa glimpse of the status quo...including the websites below.

There are also many other organisations involved: www.afridad.org;www.ejn.org.za; www.ecologicaldebt.org; www.eiti.org and their websiteswill give you a clear picture of what the whole project is all about. This is the heart of African survival and sustainability for future generations and I intend making it my field of focus now on....into a better and free Africa from Western imperialism.

I thus invite you to be part of this network as means of restoring our land!!