Africain general and COMESA Zone in particular are rich in minerals. The zone has a third of the mineral reserves in the world and two-thirds of the global deposits of diamond. Trade in gold, oil, diamonds, copper and other minerals is a key pillar of many African economies.
Leading mining and exploration companies in the world have undertaken big projects across the continent. Some of these projects drive the economies of the nations they are located in and have had infrastructure projects and even cities developed around them.
Artisanal and Small Scale Mining (ASM) is emerging as an important socio-economic sector for the rural poor in many developing nations in the COMESA Zone. People in some regions rather work independently, mining or panning for minerals using their own resources. Small-scale mining includes enterprises or individuals that employ workers for mining, but generally working with hand tools.
Here are some of the biggest mining projects in COMESA Zone:
COMESA’s Vision is to “be a fully integrated, internationally competitive regional economic community with high standards of living for all its people ready to merge into an African Economic Community”.
MISSIONIts Mission to “Endeavour to achieve sustainable economic and social progress in all Member States through increased co-operation and integration in all fields of development particularly in trade, customs and monetary affairs, transport, communication and information, technology, industry and energy, gender, agriculture, environment and natural resources”, the Secretariat was guided to develop its specific Mission Statement as follows:“To provide excellent technical services to COMESA in order to facilitate the region’s sustained development through economic integration”.
CORE VALUESCOMESA’s core values were defined as follows:
The Mission and Values Statements on their own are not sufficient to ensure an efficient and effective service delivery. They have to be linked to the strategy of the Secretariat which is building excellence into every process of the organisation through: