eBusiness Weekly
Enacy Mapakame
HARARE – London Stock Exchange (LSE) listed mining firm, Vast Resources is entering into a joint venture with Government for community development projects which should see the Marange community benefitting from diamond resources in that area.
This comes after dialogues between the mining firm and Government, which were facilitated by the Financial Markets Indaba (FMI) as part of their initiatives to link Zimbabwe with global investors under their series of programmes running under the theme “Zimbabwe beyond headlines” which are held in Harare, London and Johannesburg.
Last month, Vast signed a Joint venture agreement with Chiadzwa Mineral Resources (CMR), a company designated to represent the Chiadzwa Community interests in the concession, which resulted in the formation of Katanga Mining.
Now, Katanga is set to sign a further joint venture agreement with the Zimbabwe Consolidated Diamond Company (ZCDC), which represents Government in the diamond mining sector.
This agreement will ensure the Marange community benefit direct from the natural resources in their area, which is widely regarded as the richest alluvial diamond fields in the world.
“This is a landmark project of great significance to all the stakeholders. It is the first of its kind where the community will have a direct benefit from the natural resources in their community,” said FMI business development executive Patrick Muzondo by email.
This also comes as the mining industry has been identified as a key enabler to economic growth. This week President Mnangagwa launched a strategic roadmap to the achievement of a US$12 billion mining industry by 2023.
It seeks to increase the sector’s contribution to gross domestic product (GDP).
The mining sector is a key contributor to foreign currency earnings accounting for about 70 percent of the country’s export earnings.
It is envisaged to rake in an estimated US$20 billion by 2030. The country hold vast mineral resources and home to the world’ second largest platinum resources after South Africa.
Despite such rich mineral wealth, several communities have failed to accrue benefits that match the level of mineral resources.
In a recent interview, Mines and Mining Development Deputy Minister Polite Kambamura admonished mining firms to come up with significant projects that seek to empower communities to ensure inclusive growth.
“These companies need to come with programmes that are people centred like building schools, clinics not projects that only benefit themselves like making a road which their own trucks use, damage, repair and maintain and later claim they are doing something for the communities.
“With devolution mantra we have now, they should come up with initiatives that uplift the GDP of communities they operate in,” he said.
Although the mining sector has been projected to grow and turnaround the economy in line with Vision 2030, to achieve that, more efforts will be required to market the Zimbabwe story to potential global investors for various mining ventures.
Initiatives such as the FMI dialogues remain critical in exposing the investment opportunities in Zimbabwe to help institutional and private investors with an appetite for Zimbabwe to connect with stakeholders and eventually strike deals.
London based senior strategic analyst for the mining and metals sector at Ernst and Young LLP Hopewell Mauwa said:
“Investors are particularly impressed by the one to one business meetings. It allows conversations to move beyond generic high-level discussions to specific funding needs for live projects. As a result, the importance of finding financing solutions for early stages of mining is highlighted, as Zimbabwe largely remains underexplored with a significant number of projects still at concept level.”
