IFC and Lonmin: Digging Deep for Development

IFC and South Africa’s Lonmin recently completed a three-year partnership that helped transform the way the world’s third-biggest platinum miner operates.

IFC’s joint investment and advisory program helped Lonmin train, develop, and contract local small businesses; increase the number of women in its workforce; build an HIV/AIDS education program; and strengthen its ties with local communities.

The successful partnership demonstrates the many ways IFC is supporting private sector growth in Africa, especially by bringing opportunity to smaller businesses and to women.

Key impacts of IFC’s work with Lonmin include: 

• • Facilitating 300 supplier contracts worth $45 million with 45 local SMEs
  • Providing business development training sessions to over 1,000 SME owners under the Local Supplier Development Program
  • Developing policies to help recruit female workers to Lonmin under the Women in Mining program
  • Training peer volunteers and conducting HIV/AIDS awareness sessions to reach over 195,000 people
  • Establishing a multi-stakeholder development dialogue forum, which meets quarterly to plan further community interventions.

"The end of IFC's partnership with Lonmin does not mean the end of our commitment to supporting the development of the communities around our operations,” said Barnard Mokwena, Lonmin Executive VP for External Affairs and Human Capital. He named managers who will be “responsible for ensuring continuity of the work that IFC has helped us put together.”