‘No pot of gold for locals as China mines Sierra Leone’ 23 August 2019

When the Chinese gold miners came to Masumbiri town in northern Sierra Leone, everyone lined up for jobs. Teenagers lied about their age. Women and girls went to cook and clean at the miners’ camp, a gated compound on a nearby mountainside overlooking rice fields. Dayu, a private company that started working in Sierra Leone last year, was just the latest in a line of Chinese firms drawn to the mineral-rich ground of the West African state’s Tonkolili district in search of gold. “The people were happy at first because of the employment,” said Hassan Tholley, Masumbiri’s weary-looking chief, sitting on his porch alongside village elders in the dirt-road town.

…But 18 months into the multi-million dollar project, locals said the income they earned did not make up for their loss of land and that poverty was worsening. Like many African countries, Sierra Leone has courted foreign companies which pay governments big fees for mining rights, while locals often feel they have no say nor benefit. China is by far the biggest importer of minerals from sub-Saharan Africa; it invested about US$30 billion (RM125.3 billion) in metals mining on the continent in the last decade, nearly 15 per cent of it in Sierra Leone. Gold mining has been a relatively small industry in Sierra Leone compared to diamonds or iron ore, but is growing with companies such as Dayu, which says it has the biggest underground gold mine in the country ― its only project.

…Sierra Leone is “open for business” according to President Julius Maada Bio, who has touted the message to investors in China, Britain and the United Arab Emirates since taking office last year with a pledge to ensure mining benefits the country. Companies like Dayu pay half a million dollars a year to the government for a large-scale mining licence and are required to put 0.01 per cemt of their revenues into community development, according to the mining code. But the policies on community development are unclear and this law has not always been applied, the government said last year in a new mining policy intended to kickstart reforms. Dayu has decided to raise its contribution to 1 per cent, but is still in talks with locals on terms, said the company’s community manager Mohamed Daffae.