Titanium deposits row heats up in Kenya

Titanium deposits row heats up in Kenya

By Sam Aola

MOMBASA, Kenya (AFP): Mineral-rich sands on Kenya's south coast have provoked an escalating row involving a Canadian mining company, local residents and environmental pressure groups.

The stakes are high: the Kwale district contains an estimated 12 percent of the world's known titanium ore deposits and is also home to several thousand farmers who would have to be relocated if and when excavation begins.

Plans by Tiomin Resources, Inc., of Ontario, Canada, to exploit the deposits and construct a port to ship out the ore in a US$120 million project, have faced opposition not only from residents unhappy with compensation offers but also from Kenyan marine and wildlife officials as well as local and international organizations acting under the umbrella of the Mining Rights Forum.

Tiomin's top official in Kenya, Francoise Goutier, recently raised the temperature of the row by accusing one of these organizations, ActionAid, a British charity, of conducting a "smear campaign" and acting as a front for "British interests."

The opponents "do not have any obvious concern about this project, maybe apart from the fact that ActionAid might be acting in vested British interests," Goutier told AFP.

"I do not believe that they are acting on corporate social responsibility as they claim," the official said.

ActionAid has rejected this charge outright, while the British High Commission in Nairobi told AFP that no British companies had expressed any interest in the titanium ore deposits.

"Without redress, the implications of titanium mining, in its current form, remains a time-bomb and will be a test case for the principles of community rights, conservation of natural resources and corporate social responsibility," according to ActionAid's Irungu Houghton.

"It is not a smear campaign. That is not our intention," Elphas Ojiambo, a policy research coordinator with ActionAid, told AFP.

ActionAid has rejected as "flawed" an environmental assessment study commissioned by Tiomin and submitted to the Kenyan government, which has until August to decide whether to allow extraction to go ahead.

The charity commissioned a second study, carried out by Kenyan scientists, which suggested that the radioactive levels of thorium and uranium deposits in the area to be excavated were of unacceptably high levels.

Fears have also been raised about the effects on marine ecology of the planned construction at Shimoni, close to the Tanzanian border, of a freight station and shiploading facility.

According to Kenya Wildlife Service Director Nehemiah Rotich, the facilities will endanger rare species of flora and fauna at the nearby Wasini-Kisite and Mpunguti Marine Park.

"The proposed dredging will kill the marine ecosystem. Shimoni has a very delicate coral reef environment, we shall definitely object to any plans by Tiomin to put up their port facility", he told AFP.

The marine park has pleistocene era coral reefs whose platforms are exposed at low tide. In the nearby Shimoni forest, which Tiomin plans to clear, 345 bird species and 275 rare plant species are at risk.

"These allegations are all unfounded as the experts do not have any supporting facts to prove their case, but all this opposition to our grand project will fade away as we hold the cards," Goutier told AFP.

The issue of compensation for the area's residents is also moot.

According to Goutier, Tiomin has already entered into 21-year concessionary leases with freeholders who would receive annual payments based upon acreage, resettlement compensation and unspecified "assistance in relocation".

But John Nyamai, spokesman for the farming community in the twin villages of Maumba-Nguluku in Kwale district, disagreed.

"We have resolved among ourselves to turn down their offer because it is too little, we might be poor but we know the real value of our land," he said.

The two camps are barely on speaking terms. Although invited, Tiomin together with government officials failed to turn up at a conference held by the Mining Rights Forum in Mombasa last month to discuss the project.