Unlocking Prosperity: Twiga Joint Venture

Twiga Minerals, a joint venture between Barrick and the Government of Tanzania pioneered the establishment of a 50%-50% economic split between the Barrick entities, on the one hand, and the Tanzanian stakeholders, on the other. It is a testament to the transformative, value-creating potential of community partnerships.

Our multi-faced approach, which involves close collaboration with all key stakeholders, is designed to uplift and build sustainable, lasting communities, such as North Mara. The strategy is focused on three core pillars of local engagement:

1. Community development
2. Direct employment
3. Supply chain procurement and investments

On the Ground, Deeply Committed to the Community and Making a Difference

We approach community engagement through several different methods to build robust trust-based relationships that are open and honest and put the community at the center of it. We have a team of dedicated specialists on site at North Mara that drive the on-the-ground implementation of our community strategy and plans, working to build strong relationships, ongoing dialogue and provide a direct channel for all stakeholders. This team engages with community members daily, conducts formal community visits as well as participatory water monitoring activities, and is available to discuss how Barrick can best support community projects and proactively address any concerns. In addition, Barrick’s senior leadership, including our CEO, engage and meet quarterly directly in-person with the 11 local Village Chairpersons, who are the voice of the broader community, to transparently communicate our long-term plans for the mine.

As part of our engagement strategy, the Mine also has an accessible grievance resolution mechanism covering all 11 neighboring villages to North Mara. The Mine has set up anonymous toll-free phone lines, landlines and notice boards in each village to promote transparency and open communications. North Mara has not received any human rights-related grievances since 2019.

As with all our mines, a Community Development Committee (CDC), which is our community development partnership model, has been established at North Mara. It is made up of a diverse array of local leaders and community representatives, including women, youths and other representative groups, ensuring all perspectives are valued equally. North Mara management is represented on the CDC, but only in an advisory and governance capacity. The primary purpose of the CDC is to identify, prioritise, invest and execute projects that will help support community development that is most critical.

Prioritizing Local Direct Employment

Having a local, well-trained workforce at North Mara is not just the right thing to do, it also helps people living in the community directly benefit from the mine’s presence and provides a direct and indirect source of jobs close to home.

The Mine works to identify top talent in the surrounding communities and to provide these community members with world-class training and mentorship programs to help them grow and develop into leaders. With a strong local workforce, we are also able to address our industry’s longstanding issue of retention.

Mine, Village and People Safety Commitments

Safety is the bedrock of Barrick’s business. Our vision is that every person (employees and contractors) goes home safe and healthy, every single day. We have engaged in honest reflections and discussions across all levels of our organization, especially at North Mara, to reflect on our safety initiatives. This collective effort has led to the establishment of our revamped and renamed safety program: Journey to Zero—because zero harm starts with zero fatalities.

Journey to Zero Roadmap

Empowering our People: A Safer Tomorrow

Our Journey to Zero roadmap, which was developed collaboratively by all our regional safety teams, is marked by five progressive milestones and four focal areas for action designed to mitigate risk, manage contractor behavior and more.

At North Mara, the Journey to Zero ambition is crystal clear: ensuring the safety and well-being of every person who sets foot on site. The Mine has undertaken significant measures to implement updated safety parameters:

• Engaging with all employees and contractors through face-to-face, in-person presentations and training sessions of our Journey to Zero Safety Roadmaps—over 5,500 workers have attended and received this training.
• Infusing every aspect of operations at North Mara with our safety message by employing videos, posters, banners, graphics, lanyards, pocket cards, hard hat stickers and other materials underlining our updated Journey to Zero safety policies
• Adopting the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights (VPSHR) group standard, further emphasizing Barrick’s dedication to following international ethics best practices

Security is critically important to protecting the lives of employees at the North Mara Gold Mine and assets from coordinated and armed intruders. While most residents in the communities surrounding the Mine site are law-abiding, there are rogue groups of armed individuals who illegally invade the site and present a serious risk to the health and safety of personnel, contractors and local community members by disregarding safety and often invading the mine site while heavy, large scale mining equipment is being deployed. There are clear boundaries between local Private and Public security forces and an updated Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) is in place with the Tanzanian Police Force (TPF), as per international best practice and in alignment with the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights.

Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Tanzanian Police Force

As with any police force in the world, Barrick does not, nor cannot, control, direct or supervise a government institution that is designated to provide community law and order as prescribed under our countries’ of operations respective constitutions. However, as per best practice, North Mara has implemented an MOU with public security that ensures there are clear lines of communication between the Mine and those institutions responsible for security in the surrounding areas. There are MOUs in place with public security at all of Barrick’s mines across the globe, and this is no different to North Mara.

MOU with the Tanzanian Police Force

The MOU with the Tanzanian Police Force outlines precise protocols for engagement, incident escalation and police investigations, particularly in the case of armed intrusion at the mine, and mandates TPF training requirements and adherence to international law enforcement principles. Specifically, the MOU in place with the TPF does the following:

• Prescribes training requirements
• Prescribes the engagement forums between the Mine and the Police
• Requires the Police to adhere to international law enforcement principles
• Makes clear that members of the Police cannot enter the Mine site without prior invitation from North Mara’s senior management
• Affirms that the Police operate under their own independent chain of command—the TPF cannot direct the Mine’s private security personnel and conversely the Mine cannot direct Police members