Mining revenue and access to health care in Africa: could the revenue drawn from well-managed mining sectors finance exemption from payment for health?

Corporate influence and the global pandemic – reflections from the mining sector

“…Taking a longer-term perspective, the current emphasis on social acceptance and CSR may in fact serve to distract from deeper issues and delay identifying the regulatory weaknesses that are at the origin of the legitimacy problems companies face. More attention clearly needs to be given to questions about the potential role of well-managed mining revenues to increase access to health care (Ridde et al 2015); appropriately designed public policies, including effective and efficient tax systems; the elimination of corporate income tax holidays and incentives; and addressing tax evasion through practices such as transfer mispricing (Tax Justice Network-Africa and Actionaid 2015). The pandemic has underlined that clarifying the respective roles and responsibilities of public and private actors in the area of CSR is of central importance:…”

Universal health coverage: the roof has been leaking for far too long

“…How can we combine the effectiveness of these professionals with the need for health democracy? 23 While health financing issues are at the heart of the debate on UHC, constantly bringing to the fore the need for public financing, without it being heard (one only has to think, for example, of the colossal sums of money available from the booming mining sector in West Africa 24 ), the question of quality of care is always much less addressed. Questions of power at the centre of the care relationship and the difficulty of putting a patientcentred health system into practice certainly explain why this challenge is less addressed.…”