Kenya’s new found wealth in mining key to eradicate poverty

By Henry Munene

First, we must all, as a matter of national duty, ensure that our mining laws are clear on how proceeds from minerals, oil and gas are shared

Depending on how we manage things around this time, Kenya could either be on the cusp of rapid economic takeoff or about to miss the opportunity of millennia. 

We have the option of keeping our eyes on the ball to ensure that our newfound mineral wealth helps us put a permanent stop to the debilitating penury our people have wallowed in for eons, or let it be carted away with the possible complicity of corrupt and unfeeling leadership.

In the recent past, Mining Secretary Najib Balala has revoked licenses for mining companies and pushed royalties for gold to 3 per cent, and up to 10 per cent for Niobium, Titanium and rare earths.

I am reliably informed there are plans to tax and charge more for drilling. Now, while increasing mining royalties is welcome, I think we still can milk a little bit more from the hundreds of mining companies angling to gorge themselves on our wealth for a song.

My main focus will be on oil and gas. Just last week, London-listed Tullow Oil Plc confirmed there is oil of proven commercial value. As we speak, it is confirmed that we are sitting on more than 300 million barrels of oil, estimated to be worth more than Sh2.6 trillion.

Ngamia 1, Twiga South 1 and Etuko 1 wells have been confirmed to have significant deposits, as work commences on Ekales 1 before we go Papai 1. Simply put, folks, the air we breathe in drips with gold dust, and the land we walk on is worth top dollar; enough to erase the desperation we see in the Press when hunger strikes in the parched lands up north (of babies with scrawny necks and sagging skins on countable bones).

Why are we so blessed and so poor at the same time? First, past governments have regarded places up north – like the Lokichar basin – as if they are not part of this country. Now, these hitherto desolate lands are attracting mining billionaires like the locusts of yore that have over the years wreaked untold havoc on these hunger-prone climes.

It is instructive that even now when we are ready to drill oil, it cannot be ferried for refining to Mombasa because there are simply no roads in Turkana. So here is what we must do. First, we must all, as a matter of national duty, ensure that our mining laws are clear on how proceeds from minerals, oil and gas are shared between the national government and the counties where these resources are mined.

This should be extended to tourism and other sources of national wealth, but I digress.    Secondly, we must learn from as far back as 1884, when the European eating chiefs converged in Berlin to share Africa among themselves.

Then came 1941, when Winston Churchill met US President Franklin D Roosevelt in Newfoundland and signed the Atlantic charter, which sounded the death knell for colonialism and paved way for the neocolonial world we live in today, where world trade is skewed to the disadvantage of weak nations.

Closer home, we must remember that whenever new sources of wealth have been found, local leaders have been flown to exotic resorts by foreign and local companies ostensibly to ‘see how things are done’, even when everyone knows these junkets are a bribe for the elites to ‘eat on behalf of the tribe’ as resources are mortgaged away from the same poor voters who put the elites in power. In times like these, phony task forces will spring up to demand answers on why this and that deal went to so-and-so and not so-and-so; in a clever ploy to push for the interests of those who lose crucial deals.

In short, we have seen it all. This time round, we must be extra vigilant ensure we have a framework to ensure that our new wealth puts poverty permanently behind us.

The writer is Revise Editor for The Counties

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