06 October 2023

The call for more support for actors in the gemstone value chain at the Hurungwe District Alternative Mining Indaba made one thing clear: the sector needs liberalization to benefit host communities. As discussions around the most beneficial model for the regulation of the extractives sector continue, what are the expectations of the gemstone industry?

Stakeholders along the gemstone value chain, including miners, government, cutters and polishers, law enforcement agents, farmers, local authority representatives, and traditional leaders, came together for the dialogue platform, which was organized by the Zimbabwe Council of Churches (ZCC), Zimbabwe Environmental Law Association (ZELA), and Zimbabwe Coalition on Debt and Development (ZIMCODD) with the assistance of the Women in Gemstones Association of Zimbabwe (WIGAZ) on September 29.

The dialogue provided an essential platform for the stakeholders to have no-holds-barred conversations to promote legal and policy developments at the national level that facilitate community benefit from natural resources. Thus, communities in Hurungwe District shared their experiences fighting inequalities and exclusionary mining policies and practices within their community.

“With climate change’s effects being felt far and wide, diversification into such activities [gemstone mining] is the way to go. Hurungwe has the largest deposits of gemstones in the country, and we should try by all means to reach out to others not present here today and encourage them to gain livelihood from this value chain,” said Hurungwe Council’s Acting Chief Executive Officer, Felistus Muteta, in her opening remarks.

Subsequent discussions, however, revealed a system fraught with bottlenecks and barriers to both entry and participation in the gemstone value chain.

Community members decried overregulation of the sector, which exposed them to unscrupulous middlemen and buyers who offered them meager payments for stones in their possession. They said some of the small-scale players in the sector were also being arrested throughout the value chain, and this was discouraging their participation and hampering the growth of the sector.

In response to some of the concerns, Ministry of Mines Provincial Mining Director Nelson Munyanduri said small-scale miners made great contributions to the country’s mineral production, citing 2022 gold figures where 60% of national annual production was from small-scale miners.

“We also look forward to the formalization of the gemstones sector. It is important that this gathering look at challenges and come up with strategies to realize the full potential of gemstones,” said Munyanduri.

The Minerals Marketing Cooperation of Zimbabwe (MMCZ) advised gemstone resourceful communities and those working in the value chain to apply to be subagents who are allowed to buy colored gemstones from small-scale miners within Special Grants and sell the gemstones through corporations.

This encouragement was proffered in response to critique by miners associations of the subagent, which was qualified as a noble idea that lacked consultation. Their recommendation was for subagents to be used for exports only while opening up the local gemstone trade.

The ultimate call was for the liberalization of the local gemstone industry, with the Indaba participants making the following recommendations:

• The government must prioritize implementing ease of doing business in the gemstone sector.
• The government must establish gemstone trading centers in all provinces, starting with Magunje, where the Hurungwe district council had already offered land for the center and was waiting for the MMCZ to liberalize the trading of gemstones.
• Lawmakers must develop a binding legal framework for the sector.
• The government must remove bottlenecks in the export process in Zimbabwe. This was identified as a death trap for willing investors as the period and process required to comply with export permit stage requirements are currently protracted when compared to other countries in the region.
• The empowerment of the MMCZ is achieved by setting a threshold amount that allows the corporation to sign and issue export permits within that threshold.
• A relook at the CD1 requirements for exports as buyers of minerals prefer hard cash to buy semi-precious stones and gemstones This is a complication for ASM, as the current financial law requirements state that money must go through the banking system for one to export.
• The establishment of a one-stop shop for the sector where all requirements can be accessed under one roof