Malawi aligns its Mining Policy to the AMV

The Malawi Government through Ministry of Natural Resources, Energy and Mining with the support of African Minerals Development Centre (AMDC) hosted a three-day stakeholder consultative meeting to review its 1981 Mines and Minerals Act (MMA) and to align its Mining Regulations and new Petroleum Policy to the Africa Mining Vision (AMV).

The meeting kicked off on 10 August 2016 at the UN Conference Centre in Addis Ababa and brought together the government, civil society representatives, industry operators, and other private sector actors to discuss the mineral governance frameworks. In her welcome address to the delegation, Fatima Haram Acyl, Commissioner for the Department of Trade and Industry at the African Union Commission, said, “I am happy to note that this workshop is part of a long term relationship and continuation of our previous engagement on Malawi’s efforts to reform the country’s Mineral Regime thereby making it consistent with the Africa Mining Vision.”

The Commissioner further stated that Malawi’s effort is within a larger context of a historic paradigm shift where African states are going beyond the current understanding of the value of minerals by looking into fiscal, downstream, upstream, knowledge and spatial linkages in its mineral sector management framework.

The event also aims to allow the government to have frank discussion with all stakeholders regarding governance issues on the extractive industry and the process of the passing of the bill by the Legislative arm of the government.

In a statement released by the Deputy Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa, Abdalla Hamdok, “This meeting marks yet another important milestone in our collective agenda toward facilitating the structural transformation expected to result in unlocking Malawi’s potential as a major mineral-driven economy.”