“Kinross contributes to the promotion of sustainable development in Mauritania by supporting the national economy”
Brahim Ould M’Bareck Ould Mohamed El Moctar is the President of TMLSA (Tasiast mine, a subsidiary of Kinross in Mauritania). After working for 25 years for the Société Nationale Industrielle et Minière de Mauritanie (SNIM) in Mauritania, he joined the government of the Islamic Republic of Mauritania in 2009. Successively Minister of Rural Development, Agriculture, and Hydraulics and Sanitation, he returned to SNIM in 2016 to become its Managing Director. In January 2019, he was appointed Vice President in charge of External Relations of TMLSA, before being appointed President in September 2019.
What is Tasiast’s social responsibility?
Since purchasing the Tasiast mine in 2010, Kinross has been committed to being a leader in sustainable development, a positive contributor to host communities and a responsible steward of the environment. In keeping with this commitment, our broad vision of development includes a high level of supply chain expenditure in the country and support for the capacity building and professional development of our Mauritanian employees and teams, alongside our ongoing commitment to their safety at work. Similarly, the ongoing search for opportunities for renewable energy and the implementation of a large number of community investments and programmes are essential components.
The 2022 edition of Mauritanides, which took place at the end of November, was about local content in Mauritania, could you tell us a bit more about your “local content” policy ?
Tasiast’s positive footprint in terms of local content is very strong. This is based on a proactive policy that consists in giving priority to companies established in Mauritania to benefit from the business opportunities generated by our activities. Kinross contributes to the promotion of sustainable development in Mauritania by supporting the national economy. This is a priority for us and, in 2021, we have invested more than $300 million USD to support the Mauritanian economy through tax payments to the government, in-country suppliers, wages and community support. Of this amount, approximately $185 million USD was spent with local suppliers.
We believe that supporting local businesses is one of the most meaningful ways to contribute to local community development. For this reason, we purchase a wide range of goods and services from small local businesses and community cooperatives. Since 2011, we have spent over $2.4 billion USD with local businesses in Mauritania. Since 2016, more than 400 tenders open to Mauritanian businesses have been published.
Our process has three main objectives:
– To protect shareholders by respecting a legal/compliance framework
– To have competitive tenders with fair and transparent evaluation and
– To contribute in a sustainable and competitive manner for the benefit of the company and Mauritania.
Does your local content approach also address job creation in Mauritania ?
Absolutely! And it is an essential component. Tasiast is one of the largest gold mines in Africa, employing over 1,200 people directly, as well as 2,800 employees among our business partners. I am pleased to say that 97% of our direct workforce is Mauritanian, the result of a top priority over the past 10 years and the implementation since 2019 of a specific Mauritanisation plan signed with the Mauritanian Government. We are committed to maximising local employment opportunities at the mine with a focus on people development and capacity building. A tangible result was achieved last year, where we recorded a significant increase in the percentage of Mauritanian managers, from 55.8% in 2020 to 69.7% in 2021.
We know that the mining sector is a sector that involves risks on a daily basis. How do you anticipate the management of these risks for your employees?
In addition to the certified technical training we provide in each specific operational area, more than 64,000 hours of specific training on personal safety have been provided over the past three years. Our training combines online and face-to-face training, both in Mauritania and abroad, and is available to all levels of employees. In addition, our focus on people, linked to our Mauritanisation strategy – with its wide range of learning and development opportunities, internship programmes, recruitment and mentoring initiatives – contributes significantly to building a national, high-performing and operational workforce in line with the best international standards at Tasiast. Under the Mauritanisation Plan, more than US$30 million has been invested in technical and vocational training to support the development of local employees’ skills.
In the context of energy transition and efficiency that our world is currently experiencing, what commitments have you made to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and develop renewable energy?
Kinross recognises its responsibility to make a positive contribution to mitigating its impacts, and has recently presented its climate change strategy and action plan for greenhouse gas reduction. It provides measurable targets and states its ambition to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to become a zero-emissions company by 2050. In Mauritania, Tasiast is developing a 34 megawatt solar power plant that would reduce the consumption of fossil fuels used for electricity generation while providing excellent economic returns. This project is expected to save 530,000 tons of GHG emissions over the life of the mine, or approximately 50,000 tons per year. At the target operating rate of 24,000 tons per day, this represents a saving of approximately 20% of the fuel used for electricity generation. Our solar project will contribute to 58.5% of the targets set by Mauritania at the recent COP26 for GHG reduction in the country. Optimising the design of the mine has helped to reduce the waste transport cycle time, saving over two million liters of diesel while operating the mine more efficiently.
What role do Tasiast’s community investments and programmes play in its positive footprint approach to the local population?
In Mauritania, we have always tried to maintain a balance between close engagement with our neighbours around Tasiast and contributing to social development at regional and national levels. Tasiast’s community investments, totalling USD 17 million since 2010, have been managed transparently and have led to real improvements in the lives of Tasiast’s neighbouring communities and, by extension, the Mauritanian population.
We believe it is important to be a good neighbour, which is why we work closely with the villages in the desert near Tasiast as well as with the mayors and community in the neighbouring towns of Chami and Benichab. In the neighbouring villages, we run various programmes, including water supply, mobile clinics and veterinary support. For example, the mobile clinic in Tasiast, of which we are particularly proud, has been travelling to the most remote communities in the country since 2014 to provide medical care and equipment. More than 33,000 consultations have been carried out to date. Or the distribution of 17,800 m3 of fresh water that is delivered each year to villagers in Tasiast’s neighbouring localities such as Tmeimichatt, Chami, Benichab, Boulenoir and Mhaijratt.
All these programmes have led to a significant improvement in the well-being of these small communities, where the poverty level has fallen from 28% to 6% since 2011. In Chami, we recently launched a joint project with the municipality to clean up the town, which had accumulated dirt due to the arrival of a large new ASM-related population, putting a strain on the services provided by the Municipality. This is going well and we will soon start working on the second phase of this project, to put in place a sustainable waste management system, again in partnership with the Municipality.
