Africa Digs Deep and Finds a New Wealth

Africa digs deep and finds a new wealth

KEN WIWA - Saturday, March 4, 2006 Globe and Mail

If, like me, you sometimes wonder whether Nigeria is a cursed country, what with bird flu, religious riots and hostage-taking in our oil fields, then you should also "wonder" down the road to Toronto this Monday where, at a conference called MineAfrica 2006, you will get to see a part of Nigeria that rarely makes the news -- a part of my country I like to think represents the new and emerging face of Africa.

As a man raised on a strict diet of social activism, I was conditioned to think of the mining industry and satanic mills as the same thing. I never imagined the day when I would entertain the idea that the industry could stand for anything progressive, especially in my embattled country, which international capital has hitherto treated as one giant gold mine whose resources, natural and human, were there for the exploiting.

Well, I guess sometimes changes take place in the darkest corners. I first glimpsed a light in the tunnel about two years ago when, for reasons I can't remember now, I got myself along to some mining ndaaba in Toronto with the then-South African minister of mines, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka. It was kind of a curious event for me to hear that these fortresses of apartheid were now marketing their souls to the hard-nosed financiers on Bay Street.

I learned a bit about the mining industry that day. There was talk of the more progressive initiatives in the provision of social services and I even came across a new word, "beneficiation," which is mining jargon for the value-added services that can benefit local communities. In other words, mining didn't have to be a drain on the environment and people, but could also provide jobs, build neighbourhoods and all that.

As a clean-technology man, I am still to be fully convinced that extractive industries are good for all of us in the long term, but what really impressed me about the mining Indaba was the South African minister of mines. You imagine that a rugged mining environment would be the preserve of the boys club, but there was Ms. Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka and, yes, she was the only woman in the room. Anyway she's gone on to even bigger and better things now and is deputy president of South Africa, with some tipping her to be the next president.

In Toronto on Monday, three of the mining ministers from Africa will be women, including Nigeria's minister for solid minerals, Obiageli Ezekwesili. Ms. Ezekwesili is from the reformist wing of President Olusegun Obasanjo's administration, which includes another woman, Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala; Central Bank Governor Charles Soludo (who was recently named central bank governor of the year) and other impressive characters, such as anti-corruption czar Nuhu Ribadu. If you haven't heard much about these people, it's because most international media tend not to focus on the good stuff coming out of Africa.

Of course, for all the reformers in the world you still cannot deny that Nigeria and Africa remain economically handicapped. But if you happen to go hear Ms. Ezekwesili and her team, you will see why and how this new face of Africa can and will lift the continent from its current predicament.

Nigeria's ministry of solid-minerals development is a blueprint for what needs to take place across so many sectors in Africa. Having overhauled an industry that was plagued with porous and non-existent regulation, governed by ministerial whim, seemingly at the behest of local mafias working in league with international speculators, the ministry has used the latest technology to conduct a geophysical survey and implemented best practices in good governance to assess and reissue mineral licences.

If all this sounds too good to be true, you have to remember Ms. Ezekwesili is part of a new breed of Nigerian government official. On the advisory board of Transparency International, and head of the Nigerian chapter of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), she earned the nickname of Madame Due Process when, as an official at the Ministry of Finance, she instituted new guidelines for the procurement of government contracts.

I know the minister is on the right track, if only because at a dinner in Abuja two weeks ago, I overheard a garrulous and old-school senator nod in the direction of the head table where she was hosting the president and other ministers (including Ms. Okonjo-Iweala), and growl mischievously that "Baba [President Obasanjo's nickname] likes the women to manage the money."

The new face of Africa is challenging old [email protected]

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