NORTH-CODE Ghana, on Wednesday 27th March 2024 held a stakeholders forum on mining- induced vulnerability to radicalization and infiltration by Violence Extremism Organisation (VEOs) at the Bole District.
Speaking at the forum, Mr. Dokrugu Andrew Yahaya the technical lead for NORTH-CODE Ghana mentioned that NORTH-CODE is a national NGO which has offices in Tamale and Damongo and they operate in the Savannah region, the Northern region, North-East region and the Upper-Wast Region.
Mr. Dokrugu stated that they have been doing some work along the western corridor of the Savannah region since the year 2022, and it started as a kind of collaborative project between councilation resources of UK, another NGO in Cote d’ivoir and two in Burkina Faso to look at security issues in the border areas.
He again added that the three countries of Burkina Faso, Cote d’ivoir and Ghana converge in the vicinity of Bole and Sawla-Tuna-Kalba District so they shared some common security concerns and the citizens on all sets of the three countries have economic interactions.
Mr. Dokrugu mentioned again that they have four key activities under this pilot which is just six months, which started from October 2023 and ends on 31st March so within this six months what they are to do is rapid survey to provide authentic evidence that there is a link between unregulated mining and security, because the previous study had already documented a lot of security vulnerabilities and how mining contributing to our vulnerability to radicalization.
The technical lead for NORTH-CODE Ghana mentioned that their experience with countries like Burkina Faso and Mali is that a lot of violence extremist goes to an area and those are the places they target that is the mines.
Again in doing this investigation the idea was that they will now use the findings to develop a kind of regional platform where all stakeholders will gather and to look at the findings and come out with an action plan which will be their local plan he said.
Mr. Dokrugu Yahaya noted that they are still working towards having a regional stakeholders conference most of us here and other actors beyond the District so they can build consensus around key questions and based on that they can have a regional road map.
Finally Mr. Dokrugu stated that “this is more unless a grassroot approach we are trying to pick it from the bottom and start building the consensus, so from one level to another we can get to a point where we say the key actors on the ground think this is how mining in the Bole areas should go to maximize the benefit for the local communities and also cater for the security concerns that we have identified” he said.
Source: yagbonradioonline/Fataw Diwura
