Paper short abstract:

The ambition in the Global North for sustainable transitions increases the sourcing of new key resources. In the Global South, expansion of mines leads to devastating effects on neighboring rural communities. Extraterritorial human rights obligations are to be observed. Is that quite enough?

Paper long abstract:

Guinea has the world`s largest bauxite deposits, has rapidly expanded production since 2015. Bauxite is used to make aluminium, a key material for more sustainable vehicles. Mining bauxite involves the surface level and takes up large area, often of significant ecological value and vital for rural livelihoods. Destructive mining brings huge profits to the primary perpetrators, the mining companies and some powerful national elites. Less visible to the communities is a web of global enablers, upstream banks, investors and even multilateral developing finance institutions and downstream buyers like well-known car brands.

Germany sources nearly 90% of its bauxite imports from a single mine in the Boké region of western Guinea, the Companie des Bauxites de Guinée. GBG (operating since 1973) is owned to 49% by the Guinean State. In 2016, the German commercial bank ING DiBa provided the largest single credit of a consortium (including the World Bank Group) to expand mining operations, the loan being secured with interests by the German Government. IFC Performance Standards on Environmental and Social Sustainability apply. Human Rights oblige states. Since 2023, the German Value Chain Due Diligence Law applies to large companies like ING Diba, Volkswagen, BMW and Daimler. FIAN was asked by Boké communities to pressure the German enablers so that CBG operations stick to the red lines. This alone is a tremendous undertaking. But into what deep legal structures do we need to go so that neocolonial set-ups are transformed to give space for "African futures" worthy of such name?