Women in (and out of) artisanal mining: a call for revising Uganda’s draft Mining and Minerals Policy

Stella Muheki and Sara Geenen
Analysis and Policy Brief 25

In Uganda, a new draft Mining and Minerals Policy has been prepared by the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development. This policy brief addresses the gender dimensions of the proposed regulation. Using insights from a document review as well as a field study in Lujiinji B Mine in Kitumbi sub-county, Mubende District, the research highlights i) the danger of blueprint policies that fail to recognize women’s variegated (productive and reproductive) roles in artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM); ii) the structural and gendered inequalities in access to productive resources, leading to adverse incorporation; and iii) the risk of excluding female workers from the formal mining economy. It is a timely call for acknowledging women’s diverse roles and interests in ASM, and for making sure new legislation does not lead to more exclusion and/or adverse incorporation of the female workers.

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Burundi’s constitutional amendment: what do we know so far?

Stef Vandeginste
Analysis and Policy Brief 24

For the past five years, since the 2012 new year’s address by President Nkurunziza, the future of Burundi’s constitution has been a controversial issue. On 15 November 2017, a commission in charge of drafting a constitutional amendment bill will conclude its activities. What do we know so far about the constitutional change? The short answer is: very little. Nevertheless, some insights and questions arise when looking at (i) the process and time-line of the constitutional amendment, (ii) some legal procedural challenges and (iii) the officially communicated or informally leaked substantive points. Structured along these lines, the purpose of this Brief is to present a state of the art. The purpose is not to judge the desirability of a constitutional amendment which for the government is a matter of national sovereignty and which some opposition groups have referred to as a declaration of war and a red line that should not be crossed.

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From figures to facts: making sense of socio-economic surveys in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)

Wim Marivoet and Tom De Herdt
Analysis and policy brief 23

Over the last decades, both donor organizations and the national government have invested heavily in administering national-level surveys in the DRC. These survey results have been used in planning exercises (e.g. to elaborate the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers) and in evaluation exercises (e.g. to decide on the country’s debt relief), but the quality of these data is highly contentious as some basic demographic information on the DRC is simply unknown. This policy brief first presents the issue and illustrates its direct implications before we present a discussion of possible solutions, also for the short-run.

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Déjà vu? Congo from Mobutu to Kabila, twenty years later

Filip Reyntjens
Analysis and policy brief 22

Twenty years ago, Laurent Kabila’s AFDL troops marched into Kinshasa, thus putting an end to 32 years of rule by Mobutu. In fact, however, it was a victory orchestrated not by Kabila alone, but by a wide regional coalition whose members had good reasons for wishing to topple the regime. Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi and Angola wanted to neutralise the Zaire-based rebel movements that threatened them with Mobutu’s overt or covert support. Other countries, such as Eritrea, Ethiopia, Zambia and Zimbabwe, had their own reasons for supporting Kabila’s campaign. They all reasoned that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. The anti-Mobutu alliance was circumstantial, and its frailties would soon appear.

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