Following rapid development in recent years, the momentum of mining growth in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is making it all the more urgent for long-term solutions that will suitably address the challenges facing mines, investors, and community stakeholders.
This emerged from the recent DRC Mining Week in Lubumbashi, where a global group of consulting engineers and scientists at SRK Consulting fielded a multi-national team of professionals. Dominique Sambwa, chairman of SRK Consulting Congo, highlighted the strong sustainability focus of this year’s event, including growing concerns about artisanal mining.
“It is clear from Mining Week that the DRC mining sector is an integral part of the broader global community, which has a strong commitment to high technical and ethical standards,” said Sambwa. “The issue of artisanal mining was again at the forefront this year, for instance, and the associated environmental damage and ethical issues around child labour.”
The event provides a forum for stakeholders across the public and private sectors, from government and mining companies to service providers and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). He pointed out that, while mining in the DRC had been ongoing for a century, only a small portion of the land mass had been subject to exploration works. The potential therefore remains for mining to transform the country’s economy, said Sambwa, especially if guidelines based on international best practices are in place and, more importantly, implemented throughout the sector.
The presence of NGOs at DRC Mining Week was also an indication that expectations of the mining sector were keenly felt in many quarters, according to Vis Reddy, chairman of SRK Consulting South Africa. Reddy noted that NGOs, along with the stakeholders and communities they represented – were looking to both the public and private sectors for confirmation that the benefits of mining would be widely and fairly distributed.
Read the full article on First Mining DRC Zambia.
