By Saio Marrah
With support from the German development agency GIZ, the Mano River Union (MRU) has held a two day conference on local content policy with the aim of reviewing existing policies and identifying opportunities and making use of local skills for use in the mining sector in the sub region.
The two day conference held at the Radisson Blu Conference Centre in Freetown on 15th and the 16th November, 2021, discussed the available tools to support implementation of local employment and procurement policies, and critical success factors in local content and supplier development programmes with emphasis on best practices and policy implications.
The Minister of Mines and Mineral Resources, Timothy Musa Kabba, in his address spoke about the numerous interventions GIZ has made in MRU member countries, and cited the local content project will ensure communities and governments in the MRU gain immensely from the extraction of the mineral resources. He said while the four MRU counties are rich in mineral resource, yet the region remains poor.
He referenced the speed at which the outbreak of the Ebola virus spread in the four MRU countries and the devastating effect it had on their economies, which he said painfully reminded all about the importance of inter-state collaboration for their shared development.
The minister noted that collaboration on matters related to local content promotion is an imperative for economic diversification and sub-regional integration.
He expressed the view that the founding fathers of the union envisaged a sub-region with strong and mutually beneficial link through inter-state trade, commerce, and movement of goods and services, more especially the people of member states.
According to him, local content promotion in the sub-region offers opportunities to develop human capital and share knowledge and skills across borders for the benefits of the different countries.
He disclosed that his experience in the extractive sector shows that the investors are willing to procure goods and services locally.
The Minister of Trade and Industry, Dr. Edward Hinga Sandy in his short statement, made reference to the Sierra Leone Local Content Act of 2016 under which the Sierra Leone Local Content Agency is obligated to establish an online portal and scorecard system to simplify and ensure standardization in the way in which companies report their local content compliance data.
He mentioned what he described as an important data system that was bought by GIZ in 2016, which they are still using make it easy for companies to remotely submit the local content performance data to the agency. He said that has improved the quality of data reporting and given the agency an insight of the overall local content performance by companies. He said as the president is passionate about human capital development, there is need to train the local people to meet the demand of the mining sector.
While thanking the GIZ for their support, he also called on them to maintain their supporting system.
The GIZ Country Director for Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, Christian Widmann, said GIZ has been mandated by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, to implement the regional resource governance in the MRU. He said the project is co- funded by the EU with the overall objective of regional resource governance so as to make the mining sector the socially, environmentally and economically sustainable.
Widmann said increasing local content in the procurement and labour sector and in the supply chain of the mining cooperation is one way to keep the benefits in the communities in countries, where the impact of the mining operations is greatly felt.
The Director General of the Sierra Leone Local Content Agency, Fodeba Dabo, informed journalists that the conference came as a result of a study that was undertaken by the MRU within the region. He said the focus is on employment and procurement because benefit of the process will be experienced by the locals. He said their aim is that at the end of the day they would come up with a plan of action that they would put together named the MRU Plan of Action that will work throughout the sub region for local content policy.
Dabo said the focus on the mining sector is to look at the various challenges and success stories and from which countries can learn from each other.
He described Sierra Leone as being ahead of the other three MRU member states because the country had already developed an Act of Parliament.
He also pointed out that mining companies in the past awarded contracts to foreign firms, a position that he admitted has gradually began to change.
He thanked GIZ for the support and entreated the agency to continue supporting MRU nations.
Copyright © Politico Online 17/11/21
