Can Guinea's £3bn mine spell change?

By Richard Phinney
BBC Radio 4, Digging Deep

Ousman Diallo says working in the mine is a better option than farming

After morning prayers in the village of Mobhi in western Guinea, it takes 24-year old Ousman Diallo an hour on foot to reach his small plots of maize, rice and peanuts.

As he clears the undergrowth with a heavy machete, he keeps an ear out for monkeys - a pest in these parts.

But just over a ridge fringed with palm trees, Ousman Diallo can also hear the future: the metallic crashing of pile drivers, the roar of giant bulldozers, and the occasional blast of dynamite.

These are the sounds of a gigantic bauxite mine and aluminium refinery that will change his village forever.

"As you can see, farming is very difficult. I think it is better for me to get a job in the mine."

Rare hope

The £3bn project - one of the largest private sector investments in sub-Saharan Africa - is the brainchild of Global Alumina, a Canadian-listed start-up company.

It has also become a rare symbol of promise in Guinea, one of Africa's most impoverished nations.

"If you are going to get the bulk of benefits and just give the Africans a small bit of it, it is not going to work," says Karim Karjian, co-chairman of Global Alumina.

"You cannot just go there and say I am going to get the cream of everything."

New jobs

From the start, Global Alumina has benefited from seething frustration in Guinea with multinational mining companies, and at how little the country has reaped from its vast mineral wealth.

In the past two months, security forces have reportedly shot dead three people trying to block the trains that take bauxite out of the country with minimal processing.

Global Alumina has promised to do things very differently.

It would be a "socially responsible" mining company and pay the closest attention to the social, economic and environmental needs of local people affected by its operations.

And it would help Guinea add value to its raw materials, and create hundreds of jobs, by building a refinery to transform bauxite into alumina, the base material for making aluminium

The pitch worked, and in 2005 Guinea's government granted Global Alumina a concession in one of the world's richest bauxite reserves.

Selling out

But since it sealed the deal, the people behind the promises have begun to sell out.

Several hundred people were resettled to the new village of Tchankoun Tiouli

Global Alumina has sold a third of its stake in the project to BHP Billiton - the world's largest mining company - and another third to interests in the United Arab Emirates.

The company has also reported that it may reduce its participation further.

To see if Global Alumina's original promises are being kept, I visited the base camp for the project, about 30 kilometres from the town of Sangaredi.

It is a complex of portable cabins surrounded by security fences, where a largely expatriate management team oversees the construction of the wharves, railway lines, power stations, and cement works needed to service what the company says will be the world's largest aluminium refinery.

Social goals

But what makes this mine different is that the engineers and accountants also rub shoulders with the project's social and environmental Unit - a team of Guineans in charge of AIDS prevention programmes, the disabled, livestock development, and relationships with NGOs.

The team also oversaw the relocation, earlier this year, of several hundred people to the new village of Tchankoun Tiouli.

It is an engaging sight, with a green and white mosque overlooking a new health clinic, school, and water pump, all paid for by the company.

People are coming from everywhere to this village to wait for a job. The population is rising and we can't feed them all. So we are really suffering Ibrahim Diallo, villager

The neatly spaced concrete houses are brightly painted, and each family has one more room than they had before.

Sanitation has improved, there are new lands to farm, and compensation for every mango tree lost in the move.

Long term

One of the oldest inhabitants of the village sounded a cautionary note: "We need more jobs for the boys," she told me.

It is a complaint also sounded in the village of Mobhi, where Ousman Diallo's father Ibrahim tells me "the company hasn't kept its promises" regarding employment.

"People in this village have stopped working on the farm, because they hope to get a job.

"And people are coming from everywhere to this village to wait for a job. The population is rising and we can't feed them all. So we are really suffering."

Although Karim Karjian insists the project is back on track, he admits that progress on the mine, and the uptake of jobs, is slower than originally anticipated.

But he says that the villagers of Mobhi don't have to worry that the company that promised them so much in the first place no longer call all the shots.

"No they shouldn't find it unsettling," he said.

"This is a long term project, a 100 year project. How can you be sure the same people who started are going to be around? You cannot make sure of that."

Digging Deep will be on BBC Radio Four at 20:00 GMT on 9 December 2008.