Tanzania is endowed with vast quantities and types of resources. Central to the country’s economic growth is the extraction of these. The challenge, however, has been translating growth in extraction activities and into inclusive and sustainable socio-economic development and transformation. Instead of being of benefit to all, mineral resource extraction has only served to put Tanzania into the map of foreign capital flows but with limited benefits to the local citizens. Drawing on academic literature, government policy and legal documents as
well as other secondary materials, this paper examines challenges of translating resource extraction into inclusive and sustainable socio-economic development in Tanzania. It focuses on large scale gold mining and local content provisions. It is further argued in the paper that having in place a good policy and legal framework is nothing if it is not implemented to the benefit of local communities and the entire nation. There is, therefore, a need to move from papers to implementation if mineral resource extraction is to be of any significance to socio-economic
transformation. This is very significant especially now that Tanzania has a new mining sector legal and policy framework in place and is looking forward to making the most out of its recently discovered natural gas. This paper examines the challenges of translating resource extraction into inclusive and sustainable socio-economic development in Tanzania. It centres on the link between policy and legal documents and the actual practices on the ground. The focus is on large scale gold mining which is the largest mining sub-sector in the country in terms of foreign direct investment, mineral production and exports, and contribution to national economy. The paper draws on the repealed policy and legal framework so as to draw implications for the
implementation of the current one. The rest of the paper is organised as follows. Following this introduction, section two presents local content provisions as stated in the Mineral Policy and Mining Act of 1997 and 1998 respectively. This is followed by an examination of the extent to which such provisions were legally enforced and/or implemented. Section four
examines the reasons for why the government did not fully implement policy and legal provisions. Section five considers the implications of laxity in implementing past policy and legal provisions on the success of the current policy and legal framework.
