AngloGold Ashanti CEO Bobby Godsell calls it a social licence to mine. It is about mining in the age of enlightenment, and mining for a better world: the right to mine while minimising or eliminating environmental degradation and mitigating social disruption.
Over the past decade, Gold Fields and AngloGold have entered Ghana respectively through the purchase of mines in Tarkwa, a town about 45 minutes by plane north-west of the capital Accra, and the merger with Ashanti Gold Fields.
The ventures present more than geological and mining challenges; there are social challenges that at times seem insurmountable.
In the town of Obuasi, more than 100 years of mining and 30-million ounces extracted have not brought prosperity to the people. It is now up to the likes of AngloGold and Gold Fields to reverse that legacy. The companies go about the task admirably, but at times you wonder whether their good intentions are enough.
The biggest problem faced by both companies is that, in many instances, the only economic alternative to mining is subsistence farming.
In Tarkwa, for example, Gold Fields has started clearing land to get the locals to grow palm oil trees. It is believed there is a 35% capacity shortage in the regional market for palm oil, used for applications such as soap manufacturing. There are even plans to develop a third processing plant.
Gold Fields has also helped uplift the community by donating teachers’ quarters to a school, and building a development centre and a 100-bed maternity ward. The brick buildings stand out like sore thumbs among the mud and wood of this shanty town.
The truth is that Anglo and Gold Fields’s contributions are but a drop in a sea of gold. But what has the national government done with money paid to it by the companies?
Since 1993 AngloGold has paid royalties of $22,6-million, and since 2004 it has paid a national reconstruction levy of $1-million. How much of this, though, has bene-fited the communities?
A story is told of a district commissioner, a government appointee equal to a municipal manager, who drove a new car every time royalties were paid. He was fired after the intervention of a group of mining executives led by Sam Jonah.
By far the best social programme in the area is AngloGold Ashanti’s malaria control programme at Obuasi mine.
Obuasi is a town of 230 000 people. Because of the way the mine has evolved it is intertwined with the town, with its mineshafts spread throughout Obuasi. The town depends wholly on the mine, with parts receiving free electricity and water from it.
Malaria is a leading killer in Obuasi, accounting for 49% of all hospital cases and 22% of all deaths.
Anglo has spent $1,7-million over the past year on the most comprehensive malaria control programme in the country, and has set aside $1,3-million to keep the programme running over the next two years.
Anglo sprays all 90 000 housing and commercial structures in the town twice a year and a research laboratory has been set up for use by malaria experts from around the world. The next phase in the programme is the distribution and sale at a subsidised cost of mosquito nets.
After three years, funding and replication costs are to be solicited from organisations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
The Obuasi mine shows why Ashanti needed AngloGold in its 2004 merger. AngloGold has spent $100-million on operational equipment. This includes the installation of a fridge plant to cool down shafts that reach 32°C, a temperature that would be illegal in other parts of the world. Now the company is preparing to mine to depths of 3km. This will require South African expertise.
Robbie Lazare, the AngloGold executive for Africa Underground, believes places like Ghana are the future of gold mining as South Africa’s gold lies deeper. Lazare spent 12 years preparing AngloGold’s Moab Khutsong mine before it produced its first gold last year.
AngloGold frequently admits that the Obuasi mine has not delivered the expected results, but the new phase of development promises better prospects. Deep-lying ore, to be extracted at a cost of $44-million over the next five years, will extend the mine’s life to 2040.
Lazare’s main aim now at Obuasi is to restructure it into a 400 000- ounces-a-year mine, in a move that will see shaft closures to cut costs. His hope should also be that the mine bene-fits the locals more.
Thebe Mabanga was a guest of Gold Fields and AngloGold Ashanti
Xmas porker
The village of Iduapriem, in the western mining region of Ghana, is directly affected by mining. It was resettled to make way for mining about 10 years ago.
Idua-priem benefits from an alternative livelihood programme run on behalf of AngloGold by the Opportunities Industrialisation Centre International, a United States-based organisation that helps companies develop self-reliance programmes in developing countries.
The OICI gives loans at 15% to residents to start up farming initiatives. Projects include fish and snail farms and there is a long-term project to grow japhrota, which can be used as biofuels feedstock.
The projects, meant ultimately to be self-sustaining, face many challenges. In one loan-granting cycle, loans were handed out after the planting season, at the aspirant farmers’ insistence, and were consumed without means to repay. Another resident, who has gone into oil-palm processing, saw the price of a large barrel fall from 300 000 cedis (about R200) to 185 000 cedis (about R124) in a year.
One woman successfully entered pig farming, with two pigs having littered 15 piglets recently, but a neighbour ate his pig for Christmas instead of using it for breeding. — Thebe Mabanga