As part of a project on mining and human rights, IPIS undertook a large-scale mobile data collection exercise on operational, socio-economic and human rights aspects of artisanal and industrial mining in northwest Tanzania. Building on this baseline data gathered in the first phase of this project on the nature, scope and impact of artisanal and small-scale mining and local community perceptions on industrial mining, IPIS developed a phone-based stakeholder engagement platform for Tanzania’s mining sector.
This report describes the methodology, findings and lessons learned of the digital stakeholder engagement platform for Tanzania’s mining sector, piloted by IPIS in October 2018. The platform, which was designed in cooperation with the social tech enterprise Ulula, enables a two-way communication with communities working in and living around mining areas in northwest Tanzania. On the one hand, a selected group of informants can anonymously report incidents occurring in the mining sector via their mobile phones. On the other hand, the platform allows to send out mobile surveys on selected topics to respondents’ phones. In this way the platform allows to complement and update contextual data on the impact of the mining sector in a hands-on and prompt manner.
