COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT AT KANSANSHI MINING
Kansanshi undertakes a lot of interventions in the area of community development with the help of such partners operating in the CSR space. The key areas cover education, conservation farming, community safety, livelihoods promotion and support, gender, sports, health promotion and more.
“Within our social responsibility strategy, we have a strong focus on CSR projects that are specifically developed to assist the communities which host our operations,” Nsana adds.
Education
Kansanshi’s Education Quality Improvement Programme focuses on developing educational institutions across Zambia, including providing re-training of school heads and teachers to improve their leadership skills and enhancing teaching methods and practices.
Furthermore, on the education front, Kansanshi provides teaching and learning materials and school desks, in addition to building classroom blocks. The company also facilitates mine tours for schools for educational purposes and providing computer lessons in schools to develop ICT skills in children at an early age.
Conservation Farming
The aforementioned Conservation Farming unit revolves around training farmers and developing them from a subsistence level to farming for business and profit.
“So far, over 40,000 households have been trained in conservation farming and 7,000 are receiving inputs and weekly visits for technical support” Nsana explains. “In this space, Kansanshi helps them look for market opportunities, provides seedlings for the farmers who practice horticulture, and supports the Conservation Farming for Nutrition initiative that seeks to better the health and wellbeing in our communities.”
Community Safety
The company carries out activities of managing off site community safety, running radio programmes on safety, helping spread the awareness of COVID-19 sensitisation to communities, holding meetings with community safety representatives and patrons (including emergency simulations), and monitoring Acid Tankers along T5 truck road (Zambia). There has been 15 Safety Kinks formed along the T5 road to help as first responders in case of a road accident or community emergency.
Livelihoods Promotion and Support
This involves the designing, implementing and monitoring livelihood projects such as community banking services (Village Banks) especially to women and youths, as well as identifying gaps in the access to incomes, while formulating training programmes to mitigate the issues.
Gender
Stemming from supporting the livelihoods of individuals, Kansanshi works with partners to support female school pupils with sanitary materials, on top of facilitating the training in sexual, reproductive and menstrual hygiene, and providing support to a safe house for girls who have been sexually abused and keeping them in school by providing free educational bursaries.
The company promotes scholarships to help female pupils continue with their education to higher levels and works with teachers and parents to fight early pregnancies and marriages.
Sports
In the realm of sports, Kansanshi supports various clubs including rowing, cycling, netball, volleyball, football and athletics, and provides bicycle spares and repair services to the communities around the mine.
Health Promotion
Providing public health and health promotion services to the communities and employees, the recently launched Butuntulu bwa Nyaunda (meaning ‘Community Health and Wellness’) programme focuses on providing community health to communities.
Support to the Regional Referral Hospital, Provincial Health Office and the District Health Office in various interventions also benefits communities.
Skills Training
Kansanshi provides training to artisans in automotive mechanics, power electrical, metal fabrication and heavy-duty vehicle repair. Two successive intakes were reserved for female applicants in a role.
SMEs
By identifying business opportunities that can be filled by local entrepreneurs and starting businesses, Kansanshi also includes training in basic business and financial management skills.
INVESTING IN THE FUTURE
Moving ahead, Kansanshi will be continuing to invest in these kinds of community programmes and activities in line with its core values.
“The department will continue with the current partnerships but remain open to other mutually beneficial ones that may arise in the course of the current year,” Nsana concludes. “However, there is already a plan to increase the farming aspect of Kansanshi’s conservation farming activities by introducing the fruit tree component in the local communities.
“The key investment is in starting a programme to train apprentices who are making jewellery. The company has also invested in the training of artisans through the skills training programme that is based at the Trades Training Institute where young people are trained in automotive mechanics, metal fabrication, power electrical and heavy-duty equipment repair.”
COPPER FOR THE GLOBE
Through 2022 and beyond, Kansanshi will continue to stand as not only a key industry player in the Zambian mining, but also a contributor to the development of the wider community surrounding the mine.
Kansanshi will continue to be innovative and focused on decarbonisation and continuous improvement (cost, efficiency, productivity and quality) to ensure the operation is sustainable, recognising its obligation to extract resources responsibly, and that sustainability and social responsibility is an intrinsic part of everything the company does.
Kansanshi’s primary objective is to push its current operations to double annual mined volumes and process throughput by 2025, but alongside this, the many environmental, staff-centric and community efforts are paving the way for the company’s progressive future as a people’s business.
It is through Kansanshi’s continuation of sustainable development that the company will help provide copper in a clean and efficient way to contribute towards the increasing global electrification that we are currently witnessing, so that businesses and infrastructure around the world can incorporate renewable energy technology, made a reality through the facilitation of copper.
In light of this, it is safe to say that copper is leading the way.
