The official opening of the AMLA 2018 workshop was held at Serena Hotel on Sunday 9th, 2018 and was officiated by the Rwanda Mines, Petroleum and Gas Board Chief Executive officer and Member of Cabinet, Francis Gatare.
The workshop is gathering legal academics and practitioners in mining sector that serve as advisory to the Legal Research Team (LRT) to facilitate knowledge sharing and the creation of a network of specialized African experts.
It brings together about 120 participants from across the world including government officials, private sector representatives, NGOs, international organizations such the World Bank, the African Union Commission, Academics, and 61 advanced law students and legal professionals from 23 African universities and 19 African countries.
Officiating the AMLA, Hon. Gatare noted the importance of the workshop and sharing knowledge on the mining sector, “It is very important to continue to train an important critical mass of professionals that understand mining sector, value chain so to fully benefit from the natural resources.”
He went on, urging participants to be mindful about the balance of how to reward capital investment into the Mining sector.
“As we legislate the mining sector we must be mindful about this delicate balance of how to appropriately reward capital investment into the sector while at the same time providing an appropriate reward for the community which has got the claim over its ownership”, Hon. Gatare said
On that day, Eminent participants from across the continent and beyond including government officials, private sector representatives, NGOs, international organizations such as the World Bank Group Senior Counsel, Legal Vice Presidency, Ms. Nneoma Veronica Nwogu, Ms. Kate Mavuti from Strathmore University, Kenya and various academics who participated in an engaging session on “Governance and Transparency in the Extractive Industry”.
The World Bank Group Senior Counsel, Legal vice Presidency, Nneoma Veronica Nwogu who Facilitated the panel discussion on Governance and transparency in the extractive industry gave a short introduction on the project and how it came to grow.
“The Project was initiated by the legal vice-presidency of the World Bank, which is where I work. We incubated it for three years but it was always designed to run on the African continent by an African Institution because we believe that there is some capacity in the continent and it is important to utilize that capacity, to build for capacity for the continent; and that it is what we are seeing, watching the African legal support facility run the project.” Nneoma Veronica Nwogu said
The project has been supported and is continuously being supported by the Extractives Global Programmatic Support (EGPS), which is helping to see how the World Bank can continue to support this capacity building process.
On capacity building among activities provided within the AMLA, Ms. Veronica Nwogu said, “The program has a very selective approach to bringing students from across the continent to learn together, gain a lot of understanding and hopefully design a career in this sector; in one way or another having the necessary skills to contribute to the development of the Mining sector.”
Another highlight of the opening day is the visit of the Genocide Memorial and the Amazing race, an engaging team-building exercise. After paying a tribute to the victim of the genocide, the participants were split into teams and given a series of challenges, which called upon their cooperation skills, their awareness of government policies and their knowledge of mining laws. Now familiar with one another and their lecturers, the students can look forward to an intensive week of lectures, presentations, and hands-on exercises led by experts in the industry.
Up to date, the AMLA project has trained 140 Advanced African law students and legal professionals, from 54 countries.
The African Mining Legislation Atlas (AMLA) project was initiated by the World Bank’s Legal vice Presidency in 2013, with original funding by African Legal Support Facility (ALSF) and afterward by Extractive Industries Technical Assistance Facilities (EI-TAF). The AMLA project is being implemented in partnership with the ALSF, the African Union Commission (AUC), and several African law faculties.
AMLA is available in English, French, and Portuguese, and contains all 53 existing African mining codes in searchable format, as well as a comparison feature that allows users to compare the legislation provisions of 37 countries (and counting) across 98 commonly addressed topics in a mining law.
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