Resource Nationalism and African Mining Policy Innovations: Mobilizing New Research and Engaging Key Stakeholders is a program of outreach activities which seeks to mobilize new knowledge, comparative research methodologies and policy interventions related to African mining reforms involving resource nationalism in the 2000s. The project's key materials were co-created by an African-Canadian partnership of scholars and community-based researchers in the mineral-rich countries of Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe, which I led as Principal Investigator. Distribution will include the presentation and circulation of Policy Briefs on Resource Nationalism in African national and regional networks, the convening of policy workshops for discussion of research findings and recommendations at national level, the holding of an international conference on Comparative Resource Nationalism(s) in the Global South in the 21st Century, and the publication of the conference proceedings in a monograph collection.

The proposed project now seeks to mobilize this evidence by (1) supporting national debates and inclusive policy-making processes in the three countries and more widely in Africa, and encouraging cross-pollination of ideas across borders in Southern Africa; (2) engaging the Canadian government, donors and NGOs around the PDG's findings and policy implications; and, (3) enriching the wider scholarly literature on resource nationalism and the extractive industries via the foregrounding of recent African experiences. To achieve this, the project will engage diverse mining reform audiences through multiple venues, each of which has been selected to most effectively reach specific stakeholders, including governments, large and small-scale miners, local mine supply businesses, and mining labour and social justice activists.

For more information on the project's materials and activities, please visit: https://resourcenationalism.ca/

Month: Oct   Year: 2023

Month: Oct   Year: 2024

In the 2000s Canada developed legislative and regulatory measures to enhance transparency and encourage corporate social responsibility by national mining firms overseas. Recent initiatives, including Extractive Sector Transparency Measures Act and the Canadian Ombudsman for Responsible Enterprise, have promised to improve financial and contract transparency, strengthen miner-host country trust, and open paths to constructive engagement with host governments, communities and civil society organisations. These moves come at a time when many mineral-rich developing countries are experiencing a wave of 'resource nationalism', in which local governments, businesses, mining communities and policy activists are demanding greater local distribution of benefits from foreign mining. This project investigates the convergence of these two trends -Canadian regulatory innovation and rising host country demands on mining investors - in the context of Southern Africa, a key destination of recent Canadian offshore mining activity and a region currently enmeshed in resource nationalist mining reforms.

The project studies three African countries with significant Canadian mining operations, Tanzania, Zambia and Zambia, and investigates the changing relationships of Canadian companies with local mining stakeholders. Large, medium and small-scaled Canadian firms will be studied with the aim of gaining insights into the challenges faced and strategies developed by different segments of the Canadian offshore mining sector. The project traces the dynamics of miner-host country engagements, and aims to illuminate the key drivers and forces at play in the African context and link evolving stakeholder relations and mining regulations to shifting development outcomes. By this means the project seeks to determine the impacts of Canadian mining reforms on host country governments and mining stakeholders, and the strategies and practices of Canadian offshore miners.

Month: Apr   Year: 2020

Month: Mar   Year: 2024

Since the early 2000s, resurgent international minerals markets, disappointing tax revenues and weak economic spillovers from the mining sector have contributed to a rising wave of 'Resource Nationalism' (RN) in mineral-rich countries. RN refers to the use of discretionary policies by governments to regulate and control the resource industries with the aim of achieving economic and political benefits. While governments, local business and civil society in many countries have broadly called for the strengthening of benefits from mining, states' policy interventions have differed significantly in practice and have resulted in diverse development outcomes. In Africa there is renewed focus by governments, social stakeholders and international development agencies on how to harness the mineral sector's potential. Typically, however, these national-level debates have been isolated from and mostly uninformed by each other. The evidence surrounding recent policy practices and their outcomes has been scattered, anecdotal and thin. The proposed project seeks to address knowledge gaps in RN policy debates in Southern Africa and facilitate the flow of information surrounding RN innovations across national borders.

The project consolidates a partnership of leading RN research organisations in Canada and Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe, three mineral-rich countries where policy debates and innovations now feature prominently. Led by Prof Richard Saunders, the project team includes 5 co-applicants, 6 partner organisations and 9 specialist collaborators spread across the 4 participating countries. The project team will identify key research gaps and facilitate comparative research of recent policy experiences in Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Through the partners' research and advocacy links with regional networks of mining stakeholders and government policy processes, the project will actively engage with national and regional debates by providing new evidence and insights generated by the research. The strength of the partnership lies in the diverse capacities and expertise of its partners and research team. These include some of Canada's leading research units and scholars working on RN and mining in Africa, internationally-renown non-governmental research and advocacy organisations based in Southern Africa, and senior and emerging scholars based at universities in the region. Multidisciplinary expertise within the partnership is reflected in the project's plan for research, training and knowledge mobilisation. Research collaboration will be organised under 3 working groups focused on a variety of themes, with each group led by two co-applicants, one based in Canada and one in an African case country. Africa-based collaborators, specialists in the areas covered by the working groups, will advise and assist the groups in their research.

For more information on the project, its participating partners and researchers, and their findings, please visit the project website: https://resourcenationalism.ca/

Month: May   Year: 2020

Month: Apr   Year: 2024

Surging global demand for minerals used in renewable energy technologies represents unprecedented opportunities and challenges for Southern Africa, home to substantial concentrations of these materials. Experts anticipate that rising international consumption will sustain demand and prices until mid-century due to the impact of the “Green Transition”, the strategic shift led by industrialized countries towards the replacement of carbon-based fuels and energy generation with renewable energy sources and technologies. African exports of these “mineral energy materials” (MEMs) have increased seven-fold in the past two decades, with a forecast rise in demand of nearly 600% by 2050 for key exports like cobalt. Yet as Southern Africa emerges as a priority destination for global MEM miners and traders, there are growing concerns about the capacity of African governments to regulate the foreign-dominated industry and ensure their countries share equitably in the benefits of its unparalleled growth. Recent African iterations of “extractivism” – national development strategies that rely heavily on revenues derived from mineral exports – produced disappointing results in the 2010s, delivering weak economic growth, few opportunities for local miners, businesses and workers, and poor fiscal support for the strengthening of state social services. Contributing factors in these negative and politically destabilizing outcomes, including weak state capacity, the disproportionately influential role of mining companies in policy implementation, and the marginalisation of key domestic mining and social interests from policy-making processes, remain in place. They now threaten the potential of future MEM-driven growth in the region.

Building on the insights of a multidisciplinary team of partners in place since 2018 (SSHRC Partnership Development Grant 2020, SSHRC Connection Grant 2018), this partnership proposes to study the dynamics of MEMs in four key Southern Africa producers; the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Our team of 9 partners and 22 participants in 5 countries includes academics, civil society researchers and activists, and public policy researchers. We will address research gaps identified by the Partnership Development Grant in four policy areas critical for MEMs: (1) the formalization and incorporation of Artisanal and Small-scale Mining into MEM supply chains; (2) the reframing of mining taxation to leverage revenues and fund expanded social services; (3) the fostering of links between domestic industry and MEMs; and (4) the engagement of transnational frameworks and regulations with the aim of expanding national policy space. Drawing on our partners’ extensive links with domestic mining interests and actors, this will be the first research initiative in Southern Africa focused on bringing local stakeholders’ experiences and expectations of MEMs into the heart of regional policy debates. Building on our partners’ strong records in supporting policy-making processes, community outreach and research training for civil society organizations, we will engage a diverse range of stakeholders with the aim of transforming policy debates into action.

Month: Apr   Year: 2003

Month: Mar   Year: 2029