What socio-economic impact is the mining sector delivering?

Zawya

4 days ago

The South African economy heavily relies on the mining and extractives industry, which, in turn, means it should improve the socio-economic conditions of the local communities where mining companies operate.
Image credit: Israaeel Rahman on Pexels
In 2025, Tshikululu Social Investments continues to partner with the Minerals Council South Africa on a series of dialogues to strengthen the positive impact of the mining industry.
Mining's socio-economic impact
These dialogues, which began in 2024, bring together sector stakeholders to encourage collaboration and knowledge sharing.
On 4 April, Tshikululu and the Minerals Council successfully hosted the first dialogue of 2025.
The session brought together sector leaders for a robust and forward-looking conversation centred on the theme for this year's dialogue series: what socio-economic impact is the mining sector delivering?
To begin to answer this question, mining companies must be strategic about the impact they seek to deliver, and how they intend to measure it.
Effectively developing, implementing and measuring the outcomes of social impact strategy requires companies to be proactive and think beyond regulatory requirements and harm mitigation. It also requires collaboration among stakeholders at all levels.
In recognition of this, the dialogue in April explored how the sector can collaborate to create and support long-term, community-driven social and economic change that will empower communities beyond life of mine.
It looked at examples of collaborative models that can be used to strengthen community resilience and address shared challenges – asset-based community development (ABCD) and collective impact – and the example of Sibanye-Stillwater's sustainability strategy for Southern Africa.
Asset-based community development (ABCD)
ABCD is an approach to sustainable, community-driven development based on the idea that communities have assets and can leverage them to create impact.
As opposed to a deficit-based approach, which prioritises the identification of needs, an asset-based approach takes as a starting point the assets of individuals, groups and institutions within a community.
It assumes that everyone has something to offer and that people care about their community and so they can be motivated to create change. The model relies on relationships, building on existing structures to achieve a community vision.
The emphasis is on leveraging internal resources before seeking out external resources to fill gaps.
Collective impact
Collective impact is a structured approach to achieving social change where diverse actors from different sectors come together to address a complex social problem.
It has five core principles:
- Start with a common agenda.
- Establish shared measurement.
- Integrate participants' diverse activities to be mutually reinforcing.
- Encourage continuous communication.
- Have a strong backbone (a team dedicated to aligning and coordinating the work of the group).
In the collective impact model, there must be a shared understanding of how all members stand to benefit from participation.
This enhances accountability and motivation. By bringing stakeholders together with their diverse assets, skills, and networks, collective impact models have a multiplier effect, amplifying incoming resources.
Collective impact is a promising approach to improving collaboration, not only between individual mining operations and their host communities, but among mining companies working in the same geographic areas.
Sibanye-Stillwater's sustainability strategy
Siyanda Siko, manager of sustainability programmes at Sibanye-Stillwater, presented the company's sustainability strategy for Southern Africa.
The strategy emphasises how the company seeks to create sustainable shared value by working in an integrated way within the business and with a wide range of stakeholders.
Sibanye-Stillwater's pathway to impact and its goal of sustainable socio-economic ecosystems beyond mine closure rely on working in partnership with stakeholders (local, regional, national and international) to create value from land and strengthen non-mining economies.
Siko provided examples of coalitions and collaborative projects that have brought together very diverse stakeholders in support of shared goals, especially related to economic diversification.
Models that prioritise collaboration can be challenging. Centring engagement with communities and joint efforts across companies means being open to a bottom-up approach to impact, which may not align with existing reporting frameworks and regulatory expectations.
Collaborative models also depend on trust, and relationships between operations and their host communities are often contentious.
However, effective collaboration is essential for the mining sector to deliver sustainable socio-economic impact.
Sector leaders need to work together to develop and implement models that ensure sustainable and resilient local structures while building stronger, trust-based relationships with stakeholders.
This dialogue series represents a step towards enhanced collaboration within the mining sector in South Africa.
The session in April emphasised the importance of collaboration for scalable and sustainable development.
The value of these events is not only in sharing expertise and experience, but in bringing together sector leaders and actively creating the space for them to forge collaborations.
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