On the 27th July 2020, President Julius Maada Bio of Sierra Leone appointed Timothy Musa Kabba Minister of Mines and Mineral Resources. The mining sector is a very important source of revenue for the government. Politico’s Alpha Abu on Monday 20th December went to talk to the minister in his Youyi building office in Freetown on various issues relating to the mining sector.
Politico: Good afternoon Mr Minister let’s talk about the reviewed Mines and Minerals Act, how significant is the act itself?
Minister: Season’s greetings to you, and the rest of the Management and Staff of Politico Newspaper. Yes there’s a draft Mines and Minerals Act that is presently lodged at the House of Parliament. It has got its first reading and we hopefully be able to pass that act. The review came about as a result of the need as stated in His Excellency’s new direction manifesto of 2018 to review the Mines and Minerals Act to make it competitive and make it a regulatory and governance tool that will accrue desirable benefits for the people of Sierra Leone, and also private sector investment and the extractive industry. So I believe it’s a very compelling document and if it is ratified with the well- researched contents that it is holding, I believe Sierra Leoneans will stand to benefit more and the mining companies will also have guarantee of investing in our environment.
Politico: Tell us about the World Bank’s Resource Governance?
Yes the World Bank has really been phenomenal in the sense, they’ve been a very reliable partner in reforming the mining sector especially the governance of the sector and also in building capacity. The World Bank’s reform gave birth to the formation of the National Mineral’s Agency which was intended to depoliticise the mining sector by having a technical wing in the form of an agency that will regulate the activities of mining companies and report to the minister accordingly. And that was a very good initiative. Also throughout the period, they’ve had the extractive industry technical assistance project supporting the mineral sector in reforms. And one of the benefits has been capacity building.
And also you must have heard or seen certain aeroplanes that flew over the country sometime between 2019 and 2020 and that was as a result of World Bank sponsorship through ITAP (International Technical Assistance Programme). Millions of dollars were paid on behalf of the country to a private Geo- physical Data Acquisition and Interpretation Company that flew those flights right around the country at low altitude and inter- spaced about 150 metres apart in terms of the lines distribution and 50 metres away from sea line.
High quality data was acquired that was paid for by the World Bank. And that data acquisition has helped us to better understand the mineralisation of the country, putting us at a very vantage position when negotiating with companies. So our fair understanding of what is endowed in the country is very important for our negotiation. So the World Bank continues to support and the project is presently undergoing restructuring and as you know government met its DPO trigger requirement as laid out by the World Bank for budgetary support. The fulfilment of that thing was contingent on strategic reforms in the governance structure of mining sector reform with a mine’s law and land’s law of course and land ownership law.
All of those things were reviewed. And so we saw recently the World Bank approved $75M in favour of the country as a result of the triggers that were met especially the mine’s review and elements of it .The World Bank is also working with our guys to review the ITAP structural package that will enable us to undertake some more projects to alleviate poverty and improve the mining sector’s governance.
Politico: Coming again to the Airborne Geophysics survey and at the Bo retreat you mentioned that there were some discoveries made with huge potential for the mineral wealth of this country. Can you just elaborate on that?
Minister: Well we now know that there are a lot of rare earth metals found in Sierra Leone. As the name implies their occurrence is very rare. Sierra Leone incidentally is one of the few countries on the African continent that has found traces of these rare earth metals such as lithium, udinium and all of these. They have a rare occurrence. We are speaking with the World Bank because the geophysical survey more or less showed mineralisation of different types of minerals .And to further understand the specificity of those minerals, we are working with the World Bank for additional funding to be able to do a geo-chemical study that will help us understand precipitations and different sorts of reactions of these minerals to the introduction of chemical substances that will broaden further understanding of the minerals quantity location in the country.
Politico: The sector is still saddled with challenges especially illegal mining by foreigners sometimes with the tacit support of locals. As a ministry how are you trying to address the problem?
Minister: It is quite difficult. Like you rightly said the mining sector like other sectors is been here for the longest time. Since diamonds were found in 1933 in tefaya in Nimikoro and fitingaya in Nimikoro chiefdom it has always been very difficult for us to regulate the sector. The necessary regulatory policies and laws were never there.
His Excellency the president has enacted three novel policies, the geo- data management policy that tends to manage the geological information obtained from the sector, and also the general mining policy - there was no mining policy, and the artisanal mining policy. These are novel policies that draw their inspiration from the African Mining vision.
These policies have also informed and inspired the view of the mines and minerals act. So these laws would help us to govern the sector. But as you see there’s been the separation of the ministry and the NMA in which the ministry is more of an administrative arm and NMA implements the mines and minerals act.
The NMA also is being fraught with difficulties in terms of finance, logistics and manpower to better regulate. You also state that there’s a tacit connivance between the illegal miners and some local authorities. This is true because if somebody comes to my community and I have a body of water in which they are orchestrating illegal mining at night there’s no way as a chief or a traditional person in that community that I would not know. And if I find out it is my responsibility to call them out and report them to the authorities. But then the question begs, why do these people do not report these cases to the appropriate authorities until when the waters are polluted then they start crying what I will call crocodile tears because they’ve benefitted from it.
And unfortunately there’s been a crackdown on Galamsy as illegal miners are known in Ghana, such as the Chinese. So these Chinese have now come down to Sierra Leone and they’ve brought in Ghanaian miners and these are the folks that are now going into our reserve areas, our not to get to areas where they are doing this illicit mining and destroying our environment, especially in the Gold sub-sector with substances like mercury that has been outlawed.
You know when people are engaged in illicit activities they have no remedy in using harmful substances for their own benefit. It’s been a challenge so we are only hoping that the next fiscal year we would get the needed resources that we’ve requested from the ministry of finance to enable us to strengthen our monitoring and regulation of the sector. But we are really, really affected because we don’t have the necessary logistics, manpower and support in terms of Finance to undertake proper monitoring and regulation of the sector.
Politico: Now for the registered mining companies in the country, how would you rate their level of compliance to your regulations as a ministry?
Minister: Things are changing to be very honest you see we just came out from a meeting with SL Mining and now we have 10% Free Carried Interest and these guys are having their mining lease agreement which actually is people-centred. Many companies are now triggering direct community interventions. They are building schools and supporting the government efforts in healthcare delivery, the fight against COVID.
We saw recently Seawright Company just built a learning infrastructure in Gorama Mende, Tongay. The value of that property is estimated to be around $1.2M built in the jungle. And that’s in response to the President’s call for Human Capital Development. The same month they shipped in medical materials of about $1M to support the government in the fight against COVID. And they are also financing a $3M education facility in Njala University to educate Sierra Leoneans on livelihood skills. So you go down to Tongo Fields, Port Loko and all of these the companies are responding positively. And those of us that are providing stewardship to the sector will make sure we don’t call or watch out for ourselves but we watch out for the communities and so the companies have been very willing to give back to these communities because they understand the importance of social stability.
Politico: Some people interested in investing in mining sector have been duped. What advice would you give to them because we hear stories of them being conned by fraudsters?
Minister: There are fraudsters everywhere in the world. Sometimes some governments are even referred to as institutional fraudsters but there’s one thing about the extractive sector there are myriad of interests and so if you want to operate a successful mining operation whether it is in the downstream of buying and selling minerals or it is the upstream of getting yourself involved in mining, you have to follow due processes. You have to go to the right authorities. Because the sector is litigious nobody is going to toy with you when you come to the minister, because knowing you have the ability and it is allowed by law to go to court for in case you’re badly treated or you suspect that you’ve been disadvantaged.
My message to most of these guys that have been victims of these swindlers is how you expect to buy 1kilogram of purified gold below $40,000. So these guys are lured by these criminals. So here’s the gold mostly brass and they have ways to do these things and you fall for that and you don’t want to pay taxes. They will tell you they have 50kilograms of gold, imagine at $34,000,that’s a huge sum of money fleeced away from these folks who want to circumvent the normal processes of doing business. They don’t come to the ministry, NMA, they don’t want to pay taxes. And when you find yourself a victim into the net of those guys, you have nowhere to go, you cannot complain to us because you have not channelled your business interest appropriately.
The guys who want to come to Sierra Leone and are hesitant of these occurrences, they should know that these are isolated cases and nonetheless people at every level of the public sector are always willing to fleece the weakest, vulnerable people. But I will tell you no legitimate investor comes to my office and gets duped in my office. So they should be careful, mindful and follow processes. We also need revenue to go into the Consolidated Fund from your taxes. Those little taxes we guarantee you to having the right product and ship it out of Sierra Leone legitimately.
Politico: At the media retreat you mentioned about your ministry addressing the issue of weaponisation of women and children in mining areas. What exactly do you mean?
Minister: I mean women are being discriminated in the mining sector largely and especially in the artisanal sector.
When you go to places like Tongo and Kono on the site women are only encouraged to sell food. And in most cases when these women are on those sites the miners can take advantage. Because the women are traders who just come to the mining site. And some miner gets money they can easily convince these ladies and sometimes they can even rape them. And so there is not this encouragement to have women to participate in the artisanal mining sub-sector. And also in the large scale component of the mining sector you don’t see women providing services as their male counterparts like logistics, providing meat and plate and all of these. So definitely women are ostracised and of course children.
In some mining enclaves, children are used as labourers which is also wrong. Some reports have come out indicating the level of discrimination meted out to women and other vulnerable groups of our society. That is why, I don’t want to pre-empt but we have it in the new law that companies must have an audited human rights report. If that is ratified by parliament then that’s gonna be a game changer in protecting women and the vulnerable population.
Politico: Reflecting on 2021 what have been your greatest achievements as a ministry?
Minister: The completion of the review of the mines and minerals act because that’s going to form the basis of which we’re going to govern this sector in a compelling fashion. Secondly the fact that we were able to end the dispute between the government of Sierra Leone and SL Mining, giving government 10% of Free Carried Interest and $ 20M in lieu of small taxes that could have been paid to the 707,000 metric tonnes of iron ore that was stockpiled by the company.
But also these are very difficult times with COVID 19, companies are constrained, logistics difficult to come by, putting extra burden on the companies and reducing profitability. With all of these, we have been able to work with these companies and we have all have all gone through the worst part of the COVID pandemic. And as we’re being ushered into what looks like a 2022 of less COVID impact on the mining sector, we are hopeful with the new companies we have drafted, revenues will increase and also more employment could be created, more taxes would be paid to the National Revenue Authority and opportunities will be largely provided for Sierra Leoneans.
Politico: And finally how would you envisage 2022?
Minister: I am very optimistic that 2022 will be ok albeit the commencement of politics. Now when politics is around people don’t focus on reality. They focus on political diatribes, to discredit good things. I hope that those destructive criticisms would not affect the mining sector as well.
Politico: Thank you sir.
Minister: Thank you. I appreciate.
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