Hon. Anifa Kawooya (Uganda) on the right during discussions

YAOUNDE, CAMEROON: There is renewed interest by academics, civil society and legislators over the continent’s extractive sector and want a common mining law. The legislators are concerned over natural resource governance and economic development on the African continent and are pushing for legislation that addresses issues of transparency and accountability by the governments and mining companies.

They noted that Africa finds itself in a paradox of plenty where its abundant endowment in natural resources does not lead to equivalent levels of prosperity, development and industrialisation.

Meeting in a continental conference in Yaounde, Cameroon, on Thursday, African legislators sought to adopt and ratify a model law on a new development approach to natural resource governance in Africa.

“The model mining law would give pointers that would, for example, strengthen the negotiating capacity of Parliaments; ensuring meaningful collaboration between key players and providing support for the required social dialogue,” Dr. Paul Jourdan, one of the panelists, said.

He elaborated that the African Mining Vision, adopted by African heads of state during their July meeting in 2009 in Kigali, is seen as a solution to the poor governance, lack of strong institutions and weak policies in African states. He explained that the AMV framework is currently being used in several countries such as Mozambique, Ethiopia, Lesotho, Tanzania and provides for a transparent, equitable and optimal exploitation of mineral resources to underpin broad-based sustainable growth and socio-economic development.

Jourdan noted that AMV is also supporting countries to develop world class geological survey system so that they can negotiate from a point of knowledge. He said they hope to work with the Pan African Parliament to train parliamentarians on contract negotiations.

While legislators appreciated the need for a model law to regulate mining on the continent, they noted that there are some hurdles that need to be overcome.

Honourable Geoffrey Lungwangwa (Zambia) was concerned that some colonial land laws still obtain in Africa.

“If you have title to land, you are only confined to the surface and anything under the surface belongs to the state. That land law still prevails in our countries today and it is a contributing factor to poverty,” he said. “Many of our people are being removed from land once minerals are discovered. They are not even given shares in the mining companies. Is this really socio-economic transformation?”

He said there is need to have a model law that eventually will empower local communities to have shares in the mining companies so that they are economically empowered.

According to Hon. Bernadette Lahai (Sierra Leone), who comes from a diamond mining area, exploitation and child labour is rampant in mining areas and legislators often have no information on agreements entered by the mining companies and the state.

“Children as young as six years work in the mines. We don’t want mining to affect education,” she said adding that “Mining agreements are conducted between government and the mining companies leaving MPs and the local population in the dark.” She argued that there is need for capacity building for MPs to monitor and oversee the mining activities in their countries so that they can approve or reject mining deals that come to Parliament.

According to the African Development Bank, minerals account for an average of 70 percent of total African exports and about 28 percent of the gross domestic product. It notes that earnings from the recent oil, gas and mineral discoveries in Uganda, Mozambique and Tanzania could lead to an increase in government revenues of between 9 percent and 31 percent in the first 10 years of production.

Legislators noted that because of the structure of Africa’s extractive industries, most countries remain exporters of unprocessed commodities. They proposed that Africa needs to add value to her exports so as to unlock the full economic potential of its natural resources.

According to Hon. Anifa Kawooya (Uganda), the diversity in Africa may not be in asset in having a uniform law.

“We have different land laws and policies. Having one unified model will be complicated,” she said. “There is also the issue of who owns the land where the minerals are found. The land tenure in African countries in different. Some land is owned by the government, individuals, and others owned customarily. We also don’t know how much of our natural resources we have,” she added.

In an attempt to reverse the curse of resources, the East African Legislative Assembly is in the process of adopting a mining law for the East African region. The East African Mining Bill, 2017 will provide a legal framework to harmonise and regulate mining operations in the region and ensure environmentally friendly and sound mining practices. The bill was presented for First Reading in March this year.

The four-day conference on the theme “The issue of political and socio economic integration of the African continent: The role of the Pan African Parliament” is taking place in Yaounde, Cameroon from 22-25 August 2017 and has attracted legislators, civil society and academics from Africa.

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The critics of president Museveni’s regime may wonder why the world doesn’t condemn the increasing cases of violence on civilians in Uganda.

When video footage a couple of years back showed the US marines urinating on dead Taliban soldiers, millions of people around the world came up and  condemned the act.

According to an article attributed to president Museveni in a thesis, it is alleged that the president mistreated the corpses of his enemies. The article was adopted from “The Real Museveni One Must Know.”

It is said that in 1971 paper “the Fanon’s Theory on Violence, its verification in liberated Mozambique”, President Museveni allegedly outlined many of the political beliefs and military doctrines that would shape his military career in future. The article in the thesis, focused on the violence as a political instrument.

On page 5 and 6 of the thesis, president Museveni is quoted as saying: “This is the interpretation Fanon put on the role of the revolutionary struggle, whose highest form is armed violence, in the lives of former colonial subjects. This is what I wanted to test in one Sub-Saharan area. I used Nangade district of Cabo Delgado province, Mozambique , as my experimental area. Nangade district is in North-Eastern Mozambique. The district is inhabited by a Bantu-speaking people, the Makonde. The Makonde, according to many reliable accounts, were considered fearless and brave people…But it is worth pointing out that the imperialists, and other bourgeois confusionists, hade been spreading the lie that the Makonde were ‘the brave people of Mozambique’; that the other tribes like the Nyanjas were soft people. This was a bankrupt way of looking at things. ”

Museveni is also put in this paper that he went among the Makonde people and subjected them to brutal violence in order to prove the point that the idea of bravery or cowardice is not inherent, but rather borne of conditions to which people are subjected.

But the writer of this thesis spells it out in grisly detail on page 8 when he notes: “Hence in Mozambique, it was found necessary to show the peasants there the fragments of a Portuguese soldier blown up by a mine or, better still, his head. Once the peasant sees guerrillas holding the head of the former master, the white man’s head cold in death, the white skin, flowing hair, pointed nose and blue eyes notwithstanding, he will know, or at least begin to suspect, that the picture traditionally presented to Mozambique people  of the white man’s invincibility was nothing but a scarecrow.”

Ends

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M-net Television is slated to kick start the screening of another big brother TV reality show dubbed the 5th edition of M-net’s Big Brother Africa a few days after the 2010 South African World Cup show.

Big brother africa

The show which is popular with many East African youth will start on 18^th July 2010. It will be screened live 24/7 for 91 days in 40 African Countries.

The new show to attract a cash prize of US Dollars 200,000 will be more tactically challenging and more intensely strategic according to the M-net Africa managing director, Biola Alabi

However, the difference with the previous big brother shows is contestants will be got from the previous databases hence no call for entries in the new show.

The eligible African countries to contribute Big Brother participants are Angola, Botswana, Ghana, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Alabi says that season 5 will look for entertaining persons with a sense of humor, a love of adventure and the ability to enjoy the very exciting Big Brother experience.

By Solomon Akugizibwe, Ultimate Media

The post Africa 5th Big Brother Reality TV show coming soon first appeared on Uganda Multimedia News & Information.