The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
What’s Guinea like?
Despite its vast natural resources, Guinea remains one of the poorest countries in Africa, and has gained little from the Simandou iron ore riches.
Guinea’s government stripped BSGR of its mining rights in 2014, citing evidence of corruption, which the company denied.
The West African nation is home to the world’s largest reserves of bauxite – the raw material used to produce aluminum. The multinational corporations extracting it are making a fortune, but instead of sharing the benefits with local communities, they are driving farmers off their ancestral lands without compensation and causing severe environmental damage.
Guinea’s Bauxite mine is owned by Compagnie des Bauxites de Guinée (CBG), which is majority owned by Halco Mining, a joint venture of Alcoa, Rio Tinto, Dadco.
Project financiers include the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the United States Development Finance Corporation (USDFC), the German government’s Untied Loan Guarantees program (UFK), Société Générale, BNP Paribas, Credit Agricole, Natixis; ING-DiBa AG; and two Guinean banks, Société Générale de Banques en Guinée (SGBG) and Banque Internationale pour le Commerce et l’Industrie de la Guinee (BICIGUI).
Bauxite from CBG can be traced to a number of large consumer-facing brands, including Coca-Cola, Anheuser-Busch, Red Bull, Coors, Crisco, Campbells Soup, Audi, BMW, Fiat-Chrysler, Ferrari, Ford, General Motors, Hyundai, Jaguar, Land Rover, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, Volvo, Honda.
Inclusive Development International, an NGO, says with the world’s largest reserves of bauxite, the people of Guinea should be benefiting from the surging global demand for aluminum. Unfortunately, with the collusion of the Guinean government, multinational corporations are extracting the country’s natural wealth with a blatant disregard for the local communities impacted by their operations.
The Compagnie des Bauxites de Guinée (CBG) mine has a long history of denying the customary land rights of local communities and expropriating their farmland without any compensation. Irreversible destruction of large swaths of soil, disruption of the traditional crop rotation system and pollution of water supplies have caused extreme hardship for local communities.
Currently, CBG wants to massively expand the mine, but local communities are demanding reparations for past harm and a fairer deal that will deliver meaningful local benefits going forward.
In June 2020, while communities across Guinea were under Covid-19 shelter-in-place orders, a joint venture owned by mining giants Alcoa and Rio Tinto relocated more than a hundred families to expand its sprawling bauxite mine. Residents of Hamdallaye village in the Boké region of Guinea, who have been seeking redress for the loss of their ancestral farmlands and livelihoods to the mine, say that Compagnie des Bauxites de Guinée (CBG) moved them to an unfinished resettlement site without adequate housing, water and sanitation, or sufficient arable land and sustainable livelihood opportunities. Since it began operations in 1973, CBG has mined large areas of land surrounding the town of Sangaredi, located in the lush Boké region.
When what came to be termed a “parliamentary coup” ousted Paraguayan president Fernando Lugo on June 22, 2012, an article by Open Democracy pointed out how the Canadian-based multinational mining giant Rio Tinto Alcan (RTA) was in advanced negotiations with the Paraguayan government to construct a 674,000-tonne Greenfield aluminium-smelter.
Another article in the London Mining Network news proclaimed that “Rio Tinto Alcan benefits from Paraguay coup”.
Yet another article by IndustrialALL Global Union Challenged Rio Tinto to publicly disclose its interest and involvement, if any, in the coup d’état in Paraguay and the ousting of a legitimately elected democratic government of Fernando Lugo.
“Rio Tinto, which has a legendary association with the government of Canada, has been quick off the mark to resume negotiations on behalf of Montreal-based Rio Tinto Alcan for a $4 billion aluminium plant,” the article said, “Prior to the coup, these negotiations had stalled over a disagreement over the price of energy that Rio Tinto Alcan would need to pay for the operation of the smelter.”
According to an article in Quartz Africa, for too long Africa’s mineral wealth has failed to uplift the majority of ordinary citizens out of poverty. Resource-rich countries including Zimbabwe (gold, platinum, diamonds) , Sierra Leone (diamonds), DRC (copper, cobalt, gold, diamonds), Guinea (iron ore, bauxite) and others still trailing on various global poverty and human development indices.
