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The talk of benefit sharing with local communities is also here in Tanzania where mining happens should consider that in most African countries natural resources like minerals, water, fish, wildlife, forests and hydropower generation potentials are the heritage of all citizens in a country and Government revenues generated from the exploitation of any of them are shared among all citizens and/ different parts of a country without any consideration of where the revenues originated from. Sharing of the revenues should also consider that citizens in most African countries are free to live and work in any part of the country, and that common wealth which includes wealth from minerals extraction is shared in view of creating comparable opportunities to all citizens and consideration of how and where common revenue brings more benefit to all citizens and the nation as a whole. Very often communities where mining happens automatically tend to benefit more than the rest because mining brings them almost everything (water, electricity, healthcare, roads, market for their produce, etc) from other parts of the country and at the expense of the other parts of the country and preference for training and employment. If it is royalty to communities where natural resources extraction happen it should be the same percent of royalty in the extraction of any natural resources otherwise any preference could lead into chaos and national disintegration. The truth is that it is the communities where the water I have been drinking, the fish I have been eating and the electricity I have been consuming throughout my life deserved more and not the communities where mineral revenue I consume comes for just a short while. The only way communities could maximize their share of benefit from extraction of mineral resources on their territories is to acquire mineral rights on the mineral prospects occurring on their lands and even finance some exploration to add value on them so that they could qualify for a share in their extraction when investor (s) farms in. They could also demand for a special rate of compensation which considers disturbance and size of land surrendered for mining exercise.
Thank you for sharing this. In Kenya there is a quiet debate on benefit sharing particularly with local communities where mining is taking place. The proposed mining law has disregarded this and it is a source of discontent, and rightly so, from the civil society and sections of legislators.