Hello everybody and anybody out there!

Just a short note to say that we are discontinuing this blog so you won’t see any new posts on it. This isn’t because we’ve fallen asleep over our keyboards, it’s because we are hopefully going to be launching another platform soon that will keep some elements of this blog as well as adding some spice!

Change starts with us. Right?

Bye for now.

A new report from the Centre for Research and Development, “Challenges and future prospects of the mining sector in Zimbabwe,” raises some important points on Zimbabwe’s mining sector and the challenges a lack of accountability in that sector create for Zimbabwe’s economy.

The report begins:

The later part of the year 2013 saw the government of Zimbabwe making lukewarm efforts to address challenges bedeviling the mining sector that civil society groups working in this sector have been highlighting relentlessly for years with very limited response from government. Despite the mining sector failing to achieve the projected growth of 17% in 2013 statistics from the ministry of mines indicate that mining has significantly contributed to Zimbabwe’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) from an average of 10.2 percent in the 1990s to 19.9 percent in 2009 and 2013 surpassing agriculture. Similarly, figures from the Zimbabwe Investment Authority for 2013 also reveal an upward trend of the mining sector attracting 207 million out of the 660 million worth of investment with the remainder 460.30 million falling into other 5 sectors of the economy. Between 2009 and 2013 the mining industry became the leading export sector accounting for over 60% of Zimbabwe’s total export earnings. In spite of this growth, the mining sector’s contribution to fiscus has largely remained insignificant due to lack of transparency and accountability prevalent in the governance of the sector.

Download the full report here