YOUNG Miners Foundation (YMF) chief executive officer Payne Kupfuwa has urged Zimbabwe’s young miners to drop a poverty-driven mentality and adopt a business-savvy approach to mining, as the sector struggles to reach its full potential.
Young miners make up a majority of the artisanal miners who contribute a significant portion of mineral production, especially in gold, where their contribution averages 60%.
In an interview, Kupfuwa told NewsDay Business that training and professionalisation were key in unlocking growth and prosperity in the industry.
This comes as YMF has found a significant knowledge gap in the mining sector, emphasising that mining should be treated as a business rather than a poverty-driven initiative.
Advertisements
“The specific challenges that are faced by young miners, of course, are the knowledge gap. It’s the need for training and professionalisation of small-scale mining and how mining can be taken as a business, not as a poverty-driven initiative or a get-rich-quick scheme,” Kupfuwa said.
“So, there’s still a need for training on entrepreneurship, how to handle finances, how to deal with investors, how to attract investment, and how to run their businesses for them to grow from small to medium, if not large-scale.”
He added attending international forums and interviews would help expose young miners further to how best they could run their mines professionally.
“We are also making efforts as Young Miners Foundation to ensure that we are helping our members.
“We have a packed calendar with activities that we have put in place from the beginning of the year until the end of the year, every month, where we are going to be meeting in different provinces and educating them on formalisation and professionalisation.
“We have Young Miners’ Indabas, minerals export re-evaluation seminars, Young Miners’ Food Days, Young Miners’ Indabas, Young Miners’ Conventions, symposiums, and engagements that we’ve put in place.”
Kupfuwa said these programmes were meant to continually educate miners on the formalisation and professionalisation of small-scale mining.
He called on young miners to explore alternative financial models to bolster efficiency in their enterprise, as funding continues to remain a big challenge.
“Mining is capital-intensive from small, medium, or large-scale.
“There’s still great need for young miners to actually get alternative financing models so that they bolster efficiency gains in their mining enterprise.
“There is need for alternative financing models.”
Kupfuwa also mentioned access to mining rights as another challenge facing young miners that needs assistance.
“Serious investment is still required in the small-scale mining industry for it to grow. Those are some of the key challenges that small, young miners face. And of course, access to mining rights is another issue,” he said.
“There’s still a huge number of young people who do not own claims but who have interest in owning mining rights.
“Of course, the government has shown a great political will to try and assist young miners to be established and to have access to mining rights, but there’s still a serious gap of access to those mining rights so that they own the means of production, and also they are involved in production.”
He said he expected the Mines and Mining Development ministry to assist in the challenges facing young miners.-newsda
