Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2667 actions· ✨ 89 recent

Tanzania's Parliament passed the Written Laws (Miscellaneous Amendments) (No. 4) Act, 2024 (Bill No. 15 of 2024, published in the Special Gazette of the United Republic of Tanzania No. 34 Vol. 105 on 5 November 2024), which amends eight statutes including the Mining Act, Cap. 123. The mining-related provisions: (i) empower the Minister for Minerals, on recommendation from the Geological Survey of Tanzania (GST), to declare specific minerals as "critical" (essential to national economic, geopolitical, technology, or industrial use with limited or threatened supply) or "strategic" (mineral resources with diplomatic or defence importance) — the first Tanzanian statutory authority to do so; (ii) raise the minimum capital investment for a Mining Licence from USD 100,000 to USD 5,000,000 (a 50× hike pricing out junior explorers); (iii) authorise gemstone export following government-organised mineral auctions or international gem fairs while reaffirming the general beneficiation-in-Tanzania requirement on raw minerals and concentrates; (iv) require GST verification of mineral data on samples exported by mineral right holders; and (v) impose penalties for inaccurate or false mineral-data submissions. The Act establishes the gateway statutory authority for any future Tanzania critical- mineral export-control or stockpiling regime.

Angola's National Assembly enacted Law No. 8/24 on 3 July 2024, establishing graduated criminal penalties for illegal mining activity involving strategic minerals as defined in the Mining Code. The law creates imprisonment terms of 3–8 years for promoting or facilitating illegal operations, 2–8 years for installing unlicensed equipment or initiating unauthorised mining, and 2–6 years for transporting illegally-mined minerals, alongside a forfeiture mechanism enabling the State to seize instruments, products, and proceeds of crime. The measure closes a gap in Angola's prior Mining Code (Law 31/11 of 2011), which lacked standalone criminal-enforcement provisions for strategic-minerals protection. A companion instrument, Presidential Order No. 39/24 of 26 January 2024, established the National Observatory to Combat Illegal Exploitation of Strategic Mineral Resources as the coordinating enforcement body.

The CTRI transitional government of Gabon signed Décret n° 0276/PR/MM on 2 July 2024, establishing a dedicated legal regime for six "sovereign substances" (gold, silver, uranium, diamonds, gemstones, and rare earths) and granting the state an automatic 35% equity participation — free of all charges and non-dilutable — in any large-scale mine exploiting those materials. The decree also reserves the state an option to acquire a further 25% paid interest at market value, gives it pre-emption rights on title transfers, mandates in-country processing of extracted substances, and reserves small-scale mining titles exclusively for Gabonese nationals. Existing operators had one year from publication (until approximately 15 July 2025) to restructure their capital in compliance; the state vehicle channelling the free-carry stake is Équatoriale des Mines.

Rwanda's Parliament enacted Law n° 056/2024 of 26 June 2024 establishing a new tax on minerals, published in the Official Gazette special issue of 5 July 2024 and replacing the 2013 minerals-tax law that had used a three-category framework with a top rate of 6%. The 2024 statute restructures the mineral-tax regime into six categories (base metals, gemstones, platinum group metals, rare earth elements, energy minerals, gold) and applies differential rates between domestically processed minerals (royalty tax: 0.5%–3%) and raw-mineral exports (export tax: 0.5%–3%), explicitly favouring value-added processing. Notably the gold royalty falls from 6% to 0.5% and base-metal royalty from 4% to 3%. The law operates under separate tax-policy authority from the companion Mining Law n° 072/2024 enacted the same day and is the principal fiscal instrument underpinning Rwanda's 3T (tin/tantalum/tungsten) processing-hub strategy and broader value-addition agenda under the National Strategy for Transformation (NST1).