Creating enduring value by addressing its host communities’ most pressing development needs, through economic value creation beyond the life-of-mine and outside the mine’s supply chain says Gold Fields. It takes this approach to ensuring socio-economic upliftment in its host communities.
AUTHOR: Gerard Peter
PUBLICATION: Mining Review Africa
Gold Fields’ business is built in three pillars of a strategy that reflect the group’s operational, ESG
and growth priorities and supports its purpose to create enduring value beyond mining. The second pillar comprises meaningful investment in its host communities — those that are directly impacted by the mines.
The company believes that the greatest benefit it can provide is to empower host communities to build long-term social, economic, and environmental resilience that they require. The key to realising this vision is constant engagement with host communities to address their most pressing development needs.
“It’s impossible for us to be successful as a mining company if the communities that host us remain stuck in poverty,” states Allison Burger, Gold Fields Vice President: Social Performance.
“As an organisation, we seek to deliver value in partnerships and communities that are critical stakeholders, particularly in South Africa, Ghana and Peru where communities are in close proximity to our mines.”
Sven Lunsche, Vice President of Corporate Affairs, says that communities wield immense power when it comes to a mine’s social licence to operate. “Over the past few years, there has been an evolution in the way in which we interact with our host communities. Previously, we had a community relations department that dealt with them.
“Now, the mine managers take a direct interest because they know we cannot operate in a sea of poverty. We have to make sure that they receive meaningful benefits otherwise they potentially could disrupt our operations.”
For the most part, host communities have similar requirements at all of Gold Fields’ mines, namely jobs, procurement, healthcare, education and infrastructure. But it is important to know precisely which socio-economic upliftment initiatives will be beneficial to a particular community. To this end, Gold Fields regularly engages with communities, local governments, and NGOs.
“It’s an ecosystem of relationships, bringing the other stakeholders into play in terms of the understanding of what is needed. For example, at our South Deep operation we partnered with our neighbour Sibanye Stillwater, the municipality and communities and created a consultative development forum where the community and its representatives can talk about its development needs. We don’t want to be the dominant player and we are happy to facilitate a collective responsibility for development,” explains Burger.
Gold Fields’ target is to spend 30% of its total value in host communities by 2030, up from its current level of 27%. The group aims to achieve this through host community employment, procurement, and socio-economic development investments. While creating jobs and procurement opportunities has a direct, beneficial impact on both mining operations and communities, there are those initiatives that have an indirect benefit.
Lunsche explains, “If you build a school, it doesn’t help Gold Fields directly in terms of financial benefit or cost savings, but it does strengthen our social licence to operate. It also makes the community aware that you are a positive presence and not a company that has a negative social and environmental impact.”
After successfully funding the construction of two community clinics in the Thusanang and Pilani host communities over the past few years, South Deep reached an agreement with the Rand West City local municipality to fund another clinic in the neighbouring Hillshaven community. The community can currently only access a mobile clinic once a week, and the new clinic will address their needs by providing regular primary healthcare services.
South Deep has donated previous single-quarter facilities, valued at R900 000 and has budgeted R2 million to complete the conversion to a clinic, which is slated for completion in late 2023. The project has created eight permanent jobs since construction commenced in Q2 of 2022.
In addition, to create much needed jobs for local youths, South Deep partnered with the YES4Youth programme, which aims to connect young South Africans to work opportunities. Gold Fields committed to providing 84 entry-level learning opportunities (39 in the mining field and 45 in the services fields) to YES4Youth candidates in 2022, to assist in creating a pipeline of trained individuals in South Deep’s host communities.
In January 2022, South Deep advertised openings for matriculated, unemployed historically disadvantaged South Africans between the ages of 18 and 24 to fill YES4Youth opportunities. It received 1 401 applications and, after extensive rounds of psychometric assessments and interview processes, it welcomed the first 39 young cadets (15 females and 24 males) in April 2022 and the remaining 45 young cadets (28 females and 17 males) in June 2022.
The trainees gain skills and experience to enter the broader job market through a 12-month experiential training programme, including on-site training in production assistant roles, basics of business, money matters, time management, healthy living, understanding sexuality and HIV/Aids education, as well as designation and workplace-specific safety and other technical training.
South Deep plans to progress at least half of the cadets into a second year of experiential learning on more advanced mine operator and related training. This intends to improve the learners’ skills sets and enhance their prospects to enter the job market. The remainder will be equipped with elementary job experience as preparation for employment in the market. South Deep has committed to taking on 40 YES4Youth candidates each year over the next five years at an annual cost of R3 million to R4 million.
Further afield in Ghana, Gold Fields launched an agricultural programme in 2016 dubbed ‘Youth in Organic Horticulture Production’ (YouHop), to encourage the youth in communities adjacent to its Tarkwa and Damang mines into vegetable cultivation. Gold Fields Ghana and the German Government’s development agency committed EUR800 000 to the three-year project, which was designed to create employment and improve incomes for about 1 000 young people in those communities.
Gold Fields provided funding and other forms of assistance including equipment and farming inputs, support for the promotion of the Ghana Green Label and farmer business schools as well as stakeholder workshops. The green label certification ensures that vegetables produced under the YouHop programme receive certification from the Ghana Green Label Secretariat to validate that they were produced under strict, acceptable, and verifiable agricultural protocols.
To ensure the sustainability of the programme, a cooperative credit union was instituted, which is a community-based financing system that provides low interest credit facilities and business advisory services for the programme’s participants.
There is also training in both improved traditional farming practices and organic vegetable production, as well as assistance for producers to organise themselves into farmer co-operatives and build their leaders’ capacities to establish community-based credit unions.
Gold Fields has taken a long-term view of community development and for this reason it has created its own Community Charter that focuses on four key factors: developing strong relations and trust within its communities; creating and sharing value with communities; measuring what the group does; and reporting on its initiatives in a transparent manner.
“Measuring the quality of the relationship between our mine and our communities is important. It enables us to gauge the success of our stakeholder engagement and socio-economic development initiatives and it also gives us the opportunity to reflect on what we have delivered and how we can improve in the future,” concludes Burger.