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MOGBWEMO: Chief Osman Komora pointed up towards the power lines that bypass his village to provide electricity to foreign employees of the Sierra Rutile mine next door.

For decades, elites and foreign companies have enriched themselves by extracting diamonds and minerals, including rutile, which is used as a pigment in such products as paint and sunscreen. Meanwhile, the vast majority of Sierra Leoneans remain impoverished.
“The wealth has been criminally siphoned off by corporate entities and their allies, the politicians,” said Leslie Nestormboka, national chair of the Campaign for Just Mining.

The government is now promising to reverse that trend, according to Abdul Koroma, the deputy minister of mines. He called mining “the engine of our economic growth for the development of the country”.
The government is actively seeking foreign investment in the mining sector, he said.
“We are open for business,” he said, pointing to recent discoveries of gold and iron ore.
But it will not be business as usual, Mr Koroma said. His ministry is conducting a review of all mining agreements with an eye to negotiating better deals for Sierra Leone.

“The goal of this ministry and the government is to see that the profit of these natural resources goes to the people,” Mr Koroma said during an interview in his spacious, air-conditioned office in the capital, Freetown.
One priority is reviewing the Sierra Rutile agreement, he said.
In 1990, Sierra Leone exported US$75 million (Dh276m) worth of rutile, according to the US state department. But production soon ground to a halt when war broke out and rebels destroyed the mine.

Late in the war and desperate to attract foreign investment, the government began negotiating a new agreement to get the Sierra Rutile mine up and running again.
But Mr Nestormboka, of the Just Mining campaign, claimed that the resulting deal brought little benefit to the surrounding communities, or to the government in the form of taxes.
“The Sierra Rutile mine is a sad story of unmitigated exploitation,” he said.

Mohamad Mansaray, director of the ministry’s geological survey department, admitted that the agreement was not ideal.
“It was the best deal at the time,” he said. “When I attended meetings they would ask, ‘Are you still fighting? Is there peace in your country? Can you go upcountry and travel around?’ ”
John Sesay, director of corporate affairs for Sierra Rutile, said concessions had to be made to raise money in such a risky environment. “At the time the country was on its knees. It was hard to get people to invest.”

He was also sceptical of the government’s review process, pointing out there is no indication of when it will be completed.
“It’s creating massive insecurities in the mining sector,” he said.
Mr Koroma could not say when the review would be finished.
Mr Sesay also pointed out that Sierra Rutile, which is now expanding after rebuilding equipment and infrastructure destroyed in the war, has yet to turn a profit. It lost US$17 million last year.

“It’s going to be very difficult to see a government that wants money telling a loss-making company to lose more money because they want it,” he said.
Mr Sesay also insisted that the company is fulfilling its social responsibility to local communities.
“It’s regenerated that whole area and created employment second to none in the region,” he said.
The company is supporting projects that will create employment after the mine is gone, he said. Researchers have looked into the viability of growing palm oil for biofuels as well as farming fish in the man-made lakes left over from the dredging process that separates rutile from the soil.

Mr Sesay said the company is in “advanced stages” of negotiating an agreement with the banana giant Chiquita to grow bananas for export on reclaimed land.
But Chief Komora said Sierra Rutile needs to do more to reach out to communities. For example, it could give residents access to clean water by installing a tap on the pipeline that runs from the company’s treatment plant through Mogbwemo.
“We are happy that the mine is here,” he said. “It’s not that we don’t want it, but we are not feeling a part of it.”

It is a sentiment echoed by Mr Koroma, the deputy minister of mines, who promised that corporate social responsibility would feature heavily in new agreements.
“In this business, you win some and you lose some and we are now hoping we win some more of it, because we have lost a lot,” he said.
Sierra Leoneans have lost much more than wealth extracted from the earth. Throughout the 1990s armed groups battled viciously over control of the country’s massive diamond reserves. The decade-long conflict killed tens of thousands and displaced more than two million people.

Mining is still a volatile issue. In December in the diamond-rich district of Kono, two people were killed and several injured in clashes between police and protesters who claimed Koidu Holdings, a mining company, had failed to honour promises of resettlement to families displaced by its operations.
Mr Nestormboka, whose organisation is taking part in the review process, warned of further unrest unless Sierra Leoneans see fair distribution of their country’s riches.

“The people are dissatisfied,” he said, pointing to the low wages and environmental degradation associated with mining. “These are some of the things that are going to start conflicts if they are not addressed.”

No more business as usual in Sierra Leone - The National Newspaper

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