Rwanda

Rwanda (/ruːˈɑːndə/ or /ruːˈændə/ ( listen); Kinyarwanda: U Rwanda [u.ɾɡwanda]), officially the Republic of Rwanda (Kinyarwanda: Repubulika y'u Rwanda; French: République du Rwanda), is a sovereign state in central and east Africa and one of the smallest countries on the African mainland. Located a few degrees south of the Equator, Rwanda is bordered by Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Rwanda is in the African Great Lakes region and is highly elevated; its geography dominated by mountains in the west and savanna to the east, with numerous lakes throughout the country. The climate is temperate to subtropical, with two rainy seasons and two dry seasons each year.

National Union of Mineworkers (Great Britain)

The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) is a trade union for coal miners in Great Britain, formed in 1945 from the Miners' Federation of Great Britain (MFGB). The NUM took part in three national miners' strikes, in 1972, 1974 and 1984–85. After the 1984–85 strike and the subsequent closure of most of Britain's coal mines, it became a much smaller union.

Origins

The Miners' Federation of Great Britain was established in Newport, Monmouthshire in 1888 but did not function as a unified, centralised trade union for all miners. Instead the federation represented and co-ordinated the affairs of the existing local and regional miners' unions whose associations remained largely autonomous. The South Wales Miners' Federation, founded in 1898, joined the MFGB in 1899, while the Northumberland Miners' Association and the Durham Miners' Association joined in 1907 and 1908, respectively.

Post-1945

In January 1945 the MFGB was superseded by the National Union of Mineworkers. Within the organisation, each coalfield continued to exercise a degree of autonomy, having its own district association, president, general secretary, and headquarters. Originally, a national strike required a two-thirds majority in a ballot of members but proved near impossible to achieve and the majority was reduced to 55% in 1970 and to 50% in 1984. Regions of the union could call their own strikes. Different areas varied as to how militant they were and it was not uncommon for animosity to exist between areas.

Mining in Rwanda

Mining in Rwanda consists of extracting such minerals as tin, tantalum, and tungsten. In 2010, Rwanda earned about USD$67.8m from mineral exports which constitute 14.9% of total exports, making mining the biggest source of export revenues.

Minerals extracted

In October 2012, Rwanda’s Ministry of Natural Resources suspended mining activities in the country’s western province on the basis that they were endangering the River Sebeya. The decision was met with negativity due to the affected mining companies’ loss of production and the loss of thousands of jobs for workers at the mines.