local content in Tanzania: A tough nut to crack!

“Local content is/should be a vehicle to improve livelihoods of Tanzanians by enabling our community members to access decent jobs, training to enhance their capacities, access to markets and capital were necessary” by Colnel Magembe, District commissioner – Geita.

The desire to maximize local take from the mining operation through tax regime seems insufficient to capture the direct and meaningful benefit of the communities that will improve their livelihood. Tax revenues and fiscal benefits are most preferred by resource-rich governments (Africa) but their impact to improve community livelihood is debatable.

Like the rest of Africa, Tanzania has a long history of the mining sector which seems to be unbeneficial to communities around the mining operations. To address this situation and the public outcry, in 2017 the Government of Tanzania (GoT) adopted nationalist policies/legislation to expand the benefits of the local communities on the mining value chain.

“Geita Town Council once has a functional workshop project built by GGM as part of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) worth 2.4 billion which was for capacitating youth and women residents of the town. It is now surprising that the project has been inactive for a long time. We are asking for the district commission’s intervention on the same”.

In his response, District Commissioner Magembe promised to work on it with the intention to revamp the workshop for a positive impact.

Six years down the lane, most of the communities from Tarime and Geita where North Mara Gold Mining and Geita Gold Mining are situated perceive that the government is not doing enough to ensure compliance with the local content. They further call upon a deliberate effort from the government and mining companies to empower local communities and small entrepreneurs to have the capacity and be able to reap the advantage of the same. In doing this, central-local government coordination is of paramount importance.

“Among other things, inadequate financial capacity (capital) has been a persistent setback for the communities’ groups such as the Turbo Group in Geita. The group is required to go for greenhouse farming as the traditional type seems to be uncommercial. Hence, they must rise their capital to at least up to 35 million Tanzania Shillings while their capital now is only 10 million which was secured from the District Council.”

HakiRasilimali and International Peace Information Service (IPIS) have published a study that explores the community perspective on local content implementation in their vicinity.  The findings were shared with the targeted communities from Tarime and Geita on June 27^th, 2023, in the dialogue organized by HakiRasilimali and Policy Forum dubbed “Extractive baraza”.