By Graeme Wilkinson, Senior SI Specialist, Tshikululu Social Investments
The mining and extractives sector plays a major role in the South African economy, and it has a significant responsibility to create positive socio-economic impact in the communities where mining houses operate. Tshikululu Social Investments, in partnership with the Minerals Council South Africa, hosts an ongoing series of dialogues to strengthen the positive impact of the mining industry. These dialogues, which began in 2024, bring together sector stakeholders to encourage collaboration and knowledge sharing. A key focus of these discussions is to answer the question: 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 is increasingly necessary for stakeholders at all levels to collaborate to create and support long-term, community-driven social and economic change that will empower communities beyond life of mine.
Collaborative models can strengthen community resilience and address shared challenges – examples of this include asset-based community development (ABCD) and collective impact.
Asset-based community development (ABCD)1
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 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 2
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; and
• 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.
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.
