Assessing the effectiveness of the mining regulatory regime in supporting Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) for sustainable mining in Malawi

This study provides an assessment of the effectiveness of mining regulatory regime in Malawi in promoting the adoption and practice of Corporate Social Responsibility for sustainable mining. This comes from the background that CSR was traditionally business driven and was practiced voluntarily. However, the increased involvement of the public sector and the role it is playing to promote and enhance the agenda, prompted the assessment of the mining regulatory regime. This was a desk study which involved a comprehensive document review. The study reviewed government policies, legislations, journals, government reports and mining company reports. The study shows that CSR in the mining sector in Malawi is supported by the regulatory frameworks. The regulatory frameworks showed that they contained the CSR terminology which is implied. In addition, the sector has some recent legislations which emphasise the need to enhance sustainable mining. However, enforcement and monitoring of legal frameworks and policies is poor due to lack of capacity and poor funding of institutions. The study also found that the mining sector does not have a deliberate national CSR policy or guidelines to support the CSR agenda by mining companies. It should be noted that the precise and detailed specifications of the regulation to achieve the objectives and robust institutions improves the effectiveness of the regulatory regime to support CSR in the mining sector. Though there are policies, strategies and laws in the mining sector which play the important role of strengthening the CSR agenda, they lack supportive efforts by the government to make them more effective