Last night our Chief Executive, Mark Cutifani, delved into mining as a driver for growth in South Africa at the GIBS Business Forum at the GIBS Business School. With a wealth of minerals beneath our feet in this country, his keynote address focused on how the industry can improve South Africa’s competitiveness.
We livestreamed his speech as well as his Q&A session, which you can watch here:
To read his full speech, click here
Unfortunately we ran out time and our online community’s questions could not be answered in the Q&A. However, a lot of questions were addressed during his speech, which you can read here
South Africa’s future is linked to the future of mining. The truth is, South Africa has a long mining history and our economy has been built on this industry. This means that we are nation builders by default, and are always looking to partner with government wherever we operate. We are fully committed to the National Development Plan and hope that the real difference we strive to make is felt across the country. 
Our industry is facing tough times with low commodity prices and shifting global economics. This is, unfortunately, the reality and we are doing our utmost to soften the blow in every way we can while still remaining sustainable. The problem is, we have had to move into areas of change much quicker than we anticipated, but we are in talks with labour and government to figure out a more flexible labour structure that will help us become more productive and ultimately help us provide even more employment.
We know that the youth represent our future. We cannot have a sustainable industry if we do not look after our own future by ensuring the youth are well equipped to take over the reins when their time comes. This is good for us and good for them. We do a lot of work in our host communities, together with the Department of Education, when it comes to education by looking at school infrastructure and teacher training programmes, to name a few. Beyond schools, our enterprise development initiative, Zimele, is heavily focused on youth entrepreneurs with 38% of our Zimele funding going to youth.
For live updates from the event remember to follow @AngloAmericanZA on Twitter.