KEY POINTS
- Mining generates significant revenues that can be channeled into education systems in Africa.
- Challenges include corruption, revenue volatility, and environmental degradation in mining communities.
- Transparency, partnerships, and sovereign wealth funds can ensure sustainable education funding.
Africa’s mineral endowment has been seen as the key to the continent’s economic growth for decades. From gold and diamonds to cobalt and uranium, the raw material mining industry makes billions of dollars each year.
However, a high percentage of African countries are still deficient in education; most schools are congested, they lack teaching aids, and the dropout rate is high.
In this case, the continent could be able to address these challenges and set the pace for its development if only it invested in education with the amount of money it gets from mining.
The potential of mining revenues
African mining remains a significant, if not the most important, provider of GDPs and government revenues in the resource-endowed African countries. For example, mining accounts for nearly 10 percent of South Africa’s GDP and about 15 percent of Zambia’s GDP.
Education could well be funded by tax and royalties generated from mining activities and export earnings from the mineral resources. Programs like Ghana’s Mineral Development Fund (MDF) demonstrate how revenues can be earmarked for community development, including educational infrastructure.
Countries such as Botswana have already set a precedent. Diamonds through Debswana Mining Company has supported free primary education and also great investment in secondary and tertiary institutions. Indeed the example of Botswana shows that where mining wealth is clear, it is possible to change education systems when the wealth generated is properly accounted for.
Challenges in linking mining to education
The prospect of linking mining revenues to education funding is rather problematic. Corruption and mismanagement usually redirect funds from their planned usage.
As stated by The Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI), inadequate transparency and accountability indicators characterize most African countries in mining revenues.
Moreover, changes in the magnitude of the price of commodities result in funding volatility and it becomes difficult to support the long-run educational programs.
For instance, a downturn in copper prices heavily impacted Zambia’s budget for social services, including education. To address this, the countries have to create stabilization funds through which one could provide consistent education funding regardless of the situation in the market.
Environmental degradation caused by mining is another challenge, particularly in communities directly affected by extraction activities. Although mining revenues can build schools, pollution and relocation reduce the people’s well-being, and they do not attend school because they must work for the family income.
Toward sustainable education funding
Government policies in Africa’s mineral sector must not be inept but sustainable and inclusive so that the revenues from the mining sector when invested in education, can revolutionize the sector in the continent.
There is also the need for the development of clear structures that explain how the revenues generated will be shared.
Initiatives like the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) promote accountability, helping countries track how mining revenues are spent.
Public-private partnerships can also play a key role. Mining companies, as part of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs, have funded schools, provided scholarships, and built training centers in mining communities.
For example, AngloGold Ashanti’s CSR initiatives in Ghana include investments in education, healthcare, and infrastructure. Such partnerships can be enlarged in order to increase the effect resulting from mining revenues.
Another strategy is the investment in education-focused special sovereignty wealth funds. Through accumulating a proportion of mining revenues, sources of funding for education can be established and made to be sustainable in the long run.
