Minerals and Africa's development: the international study group report on Africa's mineral regimes

Abstract

The report is based on the central premise of the African Mining vision (AMV) that the structural transformation of African economies is “an essential component of any long-term strategy to ensure the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), eradicate poverty and underpin sustainable growth and development”, and that this requires “a strategy rooted in the utilization of Africa’s significant resource assets”. It recognizes that a central challenge which must be addressed by any long term strategy is how to overcome the historical structural deficiencies of the mining industry. Mining’s contribution as a supplier of strategic minerals to industrialized countries, the focus of policy on those minerals that play that role, the inadequate returns to the continent and the enclave nature of mining industries have, since colonial times, been and remain central features of the African landscape today. Early post-colonial attempts to transform the colonial bequest of an enclave industry failed for a variety of reasons discussed in the Report.