At Cape Town’s Alternative Mining Indaba, Malawi’s Council of Churches joined faith leaders and community activists from across the continent to demand transparent contracts, fair revenue sharing and stronger protections for mining-affected communities.
By Staff Writer
As Africa’s minerals become ever more central to global supply chains, from electric vehicles to renewable energy infrastructure, faith leaders and community activists meeting in Cape Town this month warned that the continent is still paying the highest social and environmental price while reaping too little of the reward.
That was the message from the 2026 Alternative Mining Indaba (AMI), held from February 9 to 11, where the Malawi Council of Churches (MCC) joined thousands of delegates calling for a shift from extractive deals that enrich elites and foreign shareholders to mining that protects land, labour and local livelihoods.
The AMI, convened under the theme “Alternative Stories of Mining, United in Solidarity with Mining-Affected Communities Across the Continent,” positions itself as a counterweight to the annual, investor-focused Mining Indaba, arguing that communities living with dust, displacement and polluted water are too often excluded from decisions about the minerals beneath their feet.
March to the conference centre
Delegates marched from St George’s Cathedral in Cape Town, known as the “People’s Cathedral” for its anti-apartheid role, through the city centre before delivering a memorandum to South African authorities and the official Mining Indaba organisers near the Cape Town International Conference Centre (CTICC).
The demands were sweeping but consistent: publish mining contracts, disclose beneficial ownership, open up information on taxes and royalties, and build enforceable mechanisms to ensure that the places where minerals are extracted see tangible benefits, from basic services to compensation and environmental rehabilitation.
For the MCC, the Cape Town gathering offered a continental platform to press concerns that have been simmering in Malawi’s own debates on extractives, including what church leaders describe as a persistent gap between policy promises and realities in mining communities.
“Policies without benefits”
The MCC delegation was led by Reverend Alemekeze Chikondi Phiri, the council’s secretary general, who said Malawi’s experience mirrored a broader African pattern: countries can have sound policy frameworks on paper while remaining unable, or unwilling, to enforce transparency and community benefit.
“It surprises everybody when the government expresses ignorance about international mining companies extracting within the country,” Chikondi Phiri told delegates. “We may have the best minerals policies, but these are not benefiting the mining communities, nor the nation at large.”
M’theto Lungu, an MCC programmes manager, linked Malawi’s intervention in Cape Town to outcomes from the Malawi Alternative Mining Indaba (MWAMI) 2025 in Lilongwe, where activists and faith leaders raised alarms about opaque deals and weak accountability systems.
The underlying critique is not limited to any one country: across the continent, communities often learn about major mining projects only after agreements are signed, and after land access, water use and relocation plans are already effectively decided.
Churches on the political frontline
Faith-based organisations were among the most visible voices at the AMI, coordinated in part through the Fellowship of Christian Councils in Southern Africa (FOCCISA).
Bishop Ignatius Makumbe, president of the Zimbabwe Council of Churches, framed the debate as both moral and practical.
“Faith leaders have the highest calling in leading the struggle against extractivism,” he said. “We must speak truth to power and ensure governments realise that companies often fail to benefit communities or nations. They talk of ‘critical minerals’, but critical to who, and for whose benefit?”
In Cape Town, that question landed squarely in the middle of a global scramble for minerals used in batteries, power grids and electronics, a rush that has increased pressure on African governments to approve projects quickly, sometimes at the expense of public scrutiny.
Makumbe and other speakers argued that beneficiation and local value addition, processing minerals closer to where they are mined, must become non-negotiable if African countries are to escape the cycle of exporting raw materials and importing finished goods at far higher prices.
Transparency, revenue and redress
The memorandum’s demands were read out by Mandhla Hadebe, executive director of the Economic Justice Network (EJN), FOCCISA’s economic arm and a key driver of the AMI platform.
Hadebe called for enforceable transparency measures, including contract publication, beneficial ownership registers and open-data systems that allow citizens, journalists and watchdog groups to track revenues and obligations.
He also pushed for stronger cross-border cooperation to curb tax abuse and illicit financial flows, which activists say drain public resources that could fund health, education and infrastructure.
“We call for stronger governance frameworks, effective grievance redress mechanisms and community benefit-sharing structures,” Hadebe said.
Among the reforms outlined were:
- Full disclosure of mining contracts, ownership and revenue flows
- Community benefit frameworks covering compensation, benefit-sharing and accessible grievance mechanisms
- Stronger governance safeguards to limit the blending of political and corporate interests
- Labour and environmental protections, including occupational safety and enforceable mine-closure obligations
- Public investment commitments so mining income is visibly channelled into services and development priorities
Delegates also urged financiers and investors to align mining finance with social and environmental protections, arguing that capital markets should not profit from projects that leave communities poorer and landscapes permanently damaged.
“Dispossession disguised as development”
Eric Mokuoa, the AMI chairperson, warned that the continent risked repeating historical patterns, resources extracted on a massive scale while local people carry the costs.
“Africa cannot afford another century of dispossession disguised as development,” he said. “Our stories, our land, and our dignity must guide the future of mining.”
For the MCC, the intervention was as much about governance as it was about theology: a push for rules that allow citizens to see what governments sign, what companies pay, and what communities receive, and to challenge decisions when those links are missing.
A continental network
Seventeen years after its launch by FOCCISA faith leaders, the AMI has grown into a continent-wide forum, drawing councils and partners from Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania, Kenya and the All Africa Council of Churches (AACC).
Dr Tinashe Gumbo of the AACC said the gathering had helped restore a public role for faith leaders in economic justice debates: “This AMI has provided an opportunity for faith leaders to reclaim their rightful space as the force behind the movement. They have the moral authority to move governments toward the wellbeing of God’s people.”
As the indaba closed, delegates pledged to strengthen solidarity networks, protect cultural and spiritual heritage threatened by mining expansion, and keep pressure on governments and companies to move from voluntary promises to binding commitments.
For Malawi’s churches, the message travelling home was blunt: mineral wealth should not deepen poverty.
It should help pay for the basics, and ensure that communities living closest to extraction sites are treated not as obstacles to development, but as rights-holders with a decisive voice.
