BARRICK GOLD CORPORATION has
officially opened a training academy at the old Buzwagi mine, in line with its
mine closure objectives of leaving a positive legacy. The
Barrick Academy is designed to offer tailor-made training programmes aimed at
developing the company’s frontline managers to grow both as individuals and as
leaders in their fields.
It seeks to equip them
with the skills to manage their teams more effectively and to improve
performance.
Specifically, the Barrick
Academy will be training more than 2,000 foremen, supervisors and
superintendents from the Africa and Middle East region in the next 24 months,
according to Barrick’s chief operating officer for the Africa and Middle East
region, Sebastiaan Bock.
He told a gathering over
the weekend that the company was also gearing up to include its
contractors and expand the curriculum to cover wider disciplines, including
financial leadership, advanced computer literacy and safety courses.
The opening of the
Barrick Academy follows the construction of an airport terminal at the Buzwagi
airstrip in January this year, which has paved the way for scheduled airline
services.
The terminal can serve
more than 200 passengers at a time.
“The airport terminal and
Academy form part of Barrick’s plan to turn Buzwagi into a Special Economic
Zone (SEZ),” said Bock.
A feasibility study
commissioned in 2021 showed that the creation of the SEZ had the potential to
replace the mine as the region’s economic driver and could sustainably create
3,000 jobs annually.
It could also generate
more than $150,000 each year from service levies for the local municipality and
deliver approximately $4.5 million in employment taxes a year.
The government of
Tanzania approved the conversion of the mine into a SEZ through a Government
Notice that was issued in February this year.
A number of investors
have started the process of setting up manufacturing industries inside this
area.
“How we close our mines
is just as important to us as how we build and operate them. Our Buzwagi mine
was a significant economic powerhouse in the region for nearly 15 years before
it poured its last gold in 2021.