Critical minerals in fragile and conflict-affected settings: Mining company partnerships with communities
When mining companies and communities create successful partnerships, it can bring long-term value for all sides. In fragile and conflict affected settings (FCAS), mineral exploration can be challenging but it is possible. When done responsibly, shared benefits include job creation, improved infrastructure, and support for education and social programmes – strengthening community resilience, while helping secure responsible mineral supply chains.
Yet without understanding of the context around mining sites, companies can inadvertently deepen tensions, disrupt local power dynamics, and heighten risks such as violence, land disputes, community protests or legal action. By partnering with a peace expert like International Alert, companies can identify, manage and minimise risks, preventing them from escalating. Additionally, employing peacebuilding approaches like conflict analysis, dialogue and trust-building and strong accountability mechanisms can help turn risks into opportunities.
Critical minerals and fragile contexts
Soaring demand for critical minerals to support the world’s green transition is increasingly putting pressure on FCAS. This creates both risks and opportunities for companies, governments and local communities. Alongside the many positives such as boosting local economies, investing in renewable energy, and supporting governance reforms, operations can be incredibly complex to navigate. Without a conflict sensitive approach, mining companies risk undermining mineral exploration and long-term stability. Likewise, communities can face challenges around displacement, loss of livelihoods and increased local tensions.
In this way, robust community partnerships can form a crucial part of businesses strategies to support genuinely sustainable mining practices. By working with communities, companies can operate in a suitable way for the local context, helping to increase predictability, build local support and contribute to long-term commercial growth. These collaborations also create further shared benefits by building trust between groups and fostering social cohesion.
Key steps for conflict sensitive business
In this paper, we share an in-depth case study from, Base Titanium, a leading mineral sands mining company in Kenya. When the company started its operations in 2013, it inherited historic grievances from a predecessor that had left local community relationships frayed.
Despite the initial challenges, Base Titanium invested in trust-building processes. This included transparent access to information about operations, clear communication about the company’s impact on the community and support for local people to be actively involved in decision-making. The benefits far outweighed the risks and demonstrated how authentic company-community partnerships can deliver lasting, positive change.
This note unpacks practical lessons to help mining companies and communities work together amid the accelerating rush for critical minerals. It also offers useful findings for companies exploring other investment opportunities in FCAS. The insights are grounded in real-life, locally rooted examples and decades of work by the peacebuilding sector with communities in FCAS.
