A busy start to 2020 at RDF, with numerous activities and milestones being achieved in our implementing countries! In Mali, RDF successfully deployed its RD Monitor System to support the formalisation and collection of information on the ASM sector in the two rural municipalities, Sadiola and Faléa. Moreover, our project in Ghana successfully completed the digitization of all mining licenses and showcased the online applications process in the Mining Indaba conference.  In Cameroon, our developer Lidia held informative training sessions on system maintenance and troubleshooting with the FUSION Helpdesk Staff. Furthermore, a workshop on the new Online FUSION was held in Guinea, making mining data transparent and publicly available, and FUSION was installed in Senegal after the completion of technical assessment. In this month’s newsletter, we will focus on our activities in Liberia and showcase the highlights from the country from the past year.

RDF in Liberia highlights

In order to increase awareness about the Customs Verifications Portal and the Online Repository, with support from German Development Cooperation (GIZ), a delegation from Liberia, along with RDF RS attended the 13^th OECD Forum for Responsible Mineral Supply Chain Management held in Paris in the month of April, 2019. The forum consisted of customs officials, mining companies, regulatory bodies and governments from around the world.  The delegation from Liberia consisted of the Director of Bureau of Mines, Chief Diamond Evaluator, Customs Officer from the Liberia Revenue Authority and Senior Revenue Specialist from the Revenue Development Foundation.

This forum provided an opportunity to increase awareness about Liberia’s Online Repository, Customs Verifications Portal and to learn about the latest developments in the industry. During the forum, World Bank’s Delve platform was introduced as the central database for artisanal mining and the MME delegation was successful in reaching out to them to inform them about the Online Repository. They have, since, agreed to showcase the repository from Liberia on their platform. This will make Liberia one of the first profiles to be completed by stakeholders.

In addition, throughout the year, several other training sessions were conducted with relevant stakeholder groups to increase awareness about the Online Repository. On 20^th September, 2019, RDF along with the Director of Mining Cadastre Information Management Unit (MCIMU) presented the OR to a group of journalists from around the country as part of a workshop to improve the quality of reporting on mining. The workshop was organized by New Narratives and was funded by GIZ to train journalists in evidence-based reporting. This presentation was well received by the audience and encouraged the Director of MCIMU to continue the good work done by his team in ensuring high quality data is regularly published on OR.

The Liberia Online repository can be access from the Minsitry website: https://mme.gov.lr/