Stichting Laka

Publicatie Laka-bibliotheek:
Governance and radioactivity: Managing Namibia’s uranium resources (2010)

Auteur	SARW, D.Fig
	5-63-0-00-23.pdf
Datum	juli 2010
Classificatie	5.63.0.00/23 (NAMIBIË - ALGEMEEN)
Voorkant

Governance and Radioactivity: Managing Namibia's Uranium Resources
David Fig
Southern Africa Resource Watch
July 2010

Extracting Africa’s resources
Increased demands for resources around the world have attracted significant new
investment in Africa’s extractive industries, covering mining, oil and gas, timber and
fishing. Some of the investment has arisen because of the attendant boom in commodity
prices, while some has arisen from the necessity to secure resources for development.
Traditionally extractive industries in Africa have been extremely powerful in relation
to fragile state structures. The diamonds traded in Sierra Leone and Liberia in
exchange for arms fuelled civil wars (Global Witness, 2000:4). In the Democratic
Republic of the Congo, persistent conflict led to the extractive industries being 
dominated by warlords, some of who gave mineral and logging concessions to the
Zimbabwean and Namibian military establishments (see UN, 2002 esp. paras 22-64;
BBC, 2001). We have been seeing sustained mass murder in Darfur due to conflict
partly centred on the fate of the region’s significant oil resources (Prunier 2007).
The forced removal of the San from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in Botswana is
being blamed on De Beers in partnership with the Botswana government
(Motlogelwa, 2007).
As a result of growing concerns about the relationship between conflict and mineral
extraction, key players in the mining and metals industry instituted the Kimberley
process (to combat the blood diamond trade), and the Mining, Minerals and
Sustainable Development project (MMSD) aimed at including environmental considerations
more centrally in the industry’s operations. In 2002, the industry, with World
Bank encouragement, set up the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, 
principally aimed at tracking revenues and opposing corruption. Emphasis on company
reporting on sustainability standards has been raised by the UN Global Compact, the
Global Reporting Initiative and demands emanating from brokers and bourses.