The sustainability activity of gold mining company Randgold Resources is built on the premise of devoting part of the value of its orebodies to communities around its mines, in a way that aims to elevate the quality of life and leave an ongoing economic legacy after the orebody has been mined out.

Before the London-listed company builds a mine, it completes a baseline study to define an ‘affected footprint’ with every village in the affected footprint qualifying for potable water and primary education.

The next target is for all schools to have a minimum of six classrooms with the measure of success the pass rate of the pupils.

Its second focus is on primary healthcare and all affected villages around its five mines in Mali, Côte d’Ivoire and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have access to primary healthcare.

In addition, Randgold believes that investment in food security is one of the biggest investments it can make. It does so by building village cooperatives, ensuring basic agricultural extension support and investing in tractors, ploughs and harrows to allow villagers to plant their crops in deeper soil, using company-supplied fertiliser and seed.

The next step is to elevate subsistence agricultural activity into agribusiness.

At the Tongon gold mine, in Côte d’Ivoire, Randgold CEO Dr Mark Bristow has a meeting with all the village chiefs every six months to discuss footprint plans.

An abattoir recently built in one village facilitates livestock farming, a fish farm in another is driving pisciculture and maize and chicken farming capacity is being developed in others.

Randgold carries out the research for the marketing of the agricultural products and invests in microfinancing to fund the businesses that arise to support the agricultural activity.

A local economic development programme is under way at Randgold’s Kibali gold mine, in the DRC, where it runs courses to build business capacity to ensure that inward investment is ongoing.

The agricultural college that it has built at the Loulo-Gounkoto gold mining complex, in Mali, graduates 100 economic farmers a year.

“Sustainability has become central to our success,” Bristow told Creamer Media’s Mining Weekly in an interview following last week’s presentation of 58%-higher and 32%-more profit of $77.3-million in the three months to September 30.