The Great Tanzanian Gold Robbery

Finding gold or any other natural resource must be a mixed blessing. But when an American company finds 'vast' deposits of gold in Tanzania, the blessing should be completely unmixed. The American company will take as much as it can and pay as little in royalties, taxes, wages and any other costs.

For Tanzanians, on the other hand, it will be an unmixed curse. Another invasive multinational destroying the environment, creating a few badly paid and insecure jobs and putting enormous numbers of artisinal miners out of a job. They have seen it all before and will probably see it frequently until foreigners have stripped African countries of everything they can possibly use and destroyed even the things they can't use.

People who imagine that developed countries 'give' large amounts of aid money to developing countries should be aware that even larger amounts of wealth are extracted by multinationals that don't pay much in the country they do the extracting nor in the country where they are based.

It seems extraordinary that in a country of around forty million people, around half live below the poverty line, unable to get enough food or clean water to ensure their health and the health of their families. They need the most basic things for their very survival.

At the same time, rich, foreign 'investors' take virtually all the wealth Tanzania has in order to fulfil their need for gold, uranium, precious stones and things that are not in any sense important for survival. They will use much of the country's water and contaminate the water table and the surrounding lands.

I met an Australian who worked in the mineral exploitation industry in Tanzania and he denied that people were exploited or badly paid. However, he also claimed that most highly skilled workers in the industry were not Tanzanian because, according to him, there were not enough trained people in the country. Yet, he didn't seem to see the connection between extracting most of the country's wealth and that country being unable to pay for adequate education for its citizens.

Apparently, the Tanzanian government is putting together a bill so that the state has a 10-15% stake in future mining operations. It's about time, but why don't they enable Tanzanians to do the mining? At present, there are all sorts of incentives for foreigners to come into the country and take what they can get but indigenous mining operations in Tanzania do not receive the same incentives.

Tanzania's minister for Energy and Minerals boasts about the climate for investors in Tanzania. How about the climate for Tanzanians? Most of them are still poor and many are worse off as a result of the mining operations that have been taking place in the country. The amount of money being spent on education, health, infrastructure and other basic needs is a pittance compared to the wealth leaving the country and going into the pockets of very rich people.

Tanzanians are being robbed, with the connivance of Tanzanian politicians. Sphere: Related Content

Uranium for the Rich, Contaminated Land for the Poor

Photo: Sun setting over Lake Tanganyika, Kigoma, Western Tanzania

The announcement that Tanzania has substantial deposits of uranium may or may not be good news. The country already exports a lot of gold but receives little benefit from this. There are so many subsidies and benefits for foreign miners operating there and so little capacity for enforcing proper overview of what is being extracted and exported that the only people who benefit are the big mining operators themselves. Employment in mining has dropped to a fraction of previous levels, so the industry probably represents a net loss to the country.

Why should uranium mining be any different? Large scale mining will employ very few people, will be capital intensive, will cause a lot of environmental damage, the usual story. There is a lot of talk about new laws but it is more likely that the mining operators will be allowed to come in, take what they want, do as much damage as the always do and leave the mess for Tanzanians to clean up or put up with. All the good resolutions being made now about proper regulation mean nothing when countries like Tanzania have virtually no regulatory power because of ubiquitous excuses such as the need for 'deregulation' and 'free markets'.

Countries like Tanzania need regulation and they need to be able to enforce regulation to protect people from the sort of exploitation that they have suffered since the beginning of Western invasions of the African continent. If the market is to be free, Tanzanian mining operators, ones owned by Tanzanians, not just with a few Tanzanian board members, need to be able to avail of the benefits that foreign miners receive. And the country needs to be able to audit operations to the extent that they get their fair share of royalties and other levies. So far, large scale extractive industries have only benefitted rich people and big companies while the majority of poor people lose out and end up worse off than they were previously. Sphere: Related Content