Minelife - Making a sustainable difference in Africa

Why Minelife?

Mining brings companies into close and prolonged contact with local (often geographically isolated) communities. Most mining companies already have in place budgets for poverty reduction and economic development, carried out directly by those companies or through independently managed foundations, but these are usually run independently and without coordination. This implies that efforts can be duplicated and resources wasted. MineLife is building a new, collaborative model for the mining industry’s engagement in socially responsible community development. Our members have been committed to providing health services and capacities for their workforces for some time, but increasingly realise that these services must be provided to the employees' families and broader communities. Once these community-based delivery capacities are in place, they can then be used as base from which a whole range of poverty reduction initiatives can be launched.

So far community programmes have addressed a wide spectrum of issues, including health and HIV/Aids, education, agricultural projects, and the installation of infrastructure and utilities such as potable water and electricity. To date, these sustainability programmes have been executed separately and independently. The experience gained from each project has generally not been adequately shared. Central to the MineLife is the recognition that long-term solutions to poverty require holistic approaches and our model places emphasis on the need to capture major economies of scale, secure cost efficiencies, maximize the gain from work already being done in vulnerable communities and reduce the expense of duplicating efforts among all those involved.

A single mining company generally does not have access to a wide range of donors, and conversely, aid agencies usually do not have communications with a wide range of mining industry players nor do they have the capacity or reach into geographically remote but needy communities. From all perspectives the presence of an objective and experienced coordinating body has therefore become imperative.