Mineral summit ends, roots for regulation

The chairperson of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Roel Nieuwenkamp, has urged global mineral dealers not to shy away from buying Rwanda’s minerals, saying the system in place is transparent. “My message to international buyers is ‘don’t walk away from Rwanda.’ Don’t walk away from the region. Just work together in a multi-state manner to ensure that your mineral sourcing is done responsibly,” Nieuwenkamp said. He was on Thursday addressing the media during a site tour of Rutongo Mines in Rulindo District, as part of the programme for the Summit on Responsible Mineral Supply Chains that closed in Kigali yesterday. Nieuwenkamp praised Rwanda’s mining sector as professional in implementing regional and international guidelines that curb illegal mining. The four-day summit was organised by OECD, which is the mother of the mineral traceability and tagging scheme, in partnership with International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) and the UN Group of Experts on DR Congo. More than 350 delegates who attended the summit on Thursday toured mining sites in different parts of the country, including Rulindo, Kayonza and Rwamagana districts; and Kigali, among others, with many of them, eager to verify Rwanda’s mining potential. “What we see here is a professional system and it is good to see that what we work on in a multistate process is something concrete - and you see the mineral tagging being done in the professional way here in Rwanda,” Nieuwenkamp said. “Looking at Rwanda, we are certain that the system works and provides experiences on the ground that we can learn from to strengthen the systems for responsible sourcing and scale up,” he added.Traceability systemAsked about the progress of the mineral traceability system, Nieuwenkamp chose not to divulge details, but gave a mixed answer. “There is a lot of diversity there (in DR Congo). Some provinces and states have an enormous amount of work to be done and some are comparable to Rwanda in terms of establishing the certification mechanisms and having a credible process,” he said. Nieuwenkamp said other countries in the region are still in the early stages of mineral traceability. “In most cases, we have to first look at where there are greater challenges before we can move outwards. So they are part of ICGLR and have pledged to implement the system as well. How each member state approaches the timeline is up to them,” Nieuwenkamp said.Observers said the summit was an ideal forum to dispel the inaccuracies in reports produced by the watchdogs on conflict minerals. Rwanda’s mineral sector employs more than 35,000 people and has been growing at a rate of 10 per cent in revenue and volume since 1999, statistics from the Ministry of Natural Resources show.The ministry indicates that about 90 per cent of the country’s surface area is underlain by the Kibaran System Rocks, which are known to be mineralised wherever they have occurred, such as in Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi, DR Congo and Angola.Rwanda’s mineral volume last year stood at 8,000 tonnes and fetched $136.6 million (about Rwf86.7 billion). The government’s plan is to increase the figures to 18,000 tonnes and $400 million by 2017. Delegates at the summit included Patrick Amisi Lupia, DR Congo’s provincial minister of mines, Kay Nimmo, the deputy campaigns director of the International Tin Research Institute, and Sasha Lezhnev, a senior policy analyst at Enough Project, among others.

National

Mineral summit ends, roots for regulation