The government is using a digital platform called Inkomane to ensure transparency in the mining sector by addressing issues like illegal mining, tax evasion, and ensuring that mining companies contribute to employee health insurance coverage, officials have said.

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While appearing before the lower chamber’s committee on governance and gender affairs, on January 15, Francis Kamanzi, the CEO of Rwanda Mines, Petroleum, and Gas Board (RMB), highlighted the role of Inkomane in digitizing the mining sector. The technology seeks to strengthen the coordination of mining activities and improve accountability, Kamanzi said.

"From the beginning of last year, we were trying to find ways how we could digitize the mining sector. Sometimes, mining companies never even paid taxes. Rwanda Revenue Authority (RRA) was often confused as companies would claim losses and fail to produce receipts,” Kamanzi explained.

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The new platform integrates services provided by RRA, ensuring all financial transactions are recorded.

"This means all business activities are documented. Whether it’s buying a tree or using motorbike transport for research purposes, all expenses must be recorded. This helps RRA to track both expenses and income, while also generating Electronic Billing Machine (EBM) receipts,” Kamanzi noted.

He also pointed out that when the platform was introduced, last October, there was hesitancy in its adaptation, but with the help of local governance institutions, companies started to use it.

"We noticed some companies did not have bank accounts and sometimes could face the challenge of not accessing bank loans. But the only reason was that the banks couldn’t see bank statements,” Kamanzi said. "But after introducing this digital system, companies in the mining industry were forced to open bank accounts.”

Kamanzi said the platform also tracks employee salaries, ensuring that companies fulfill their obligations to workers. Employers are now required to pay salaries through bank accounts and these transactions are documented in the system.

"Among the requirements is recording employee salaries. Employers must detail the company name, the number of employees, their salaries, and their insurance contributions,” he said. "Employers are now required to pay salaries through bank accounts for easy tracing. Traditionally they paid them in cash. This will help in the future in case of inspection. It would easily be visible to see the salaries and insurance contributions. This technology helps us to collect all that information.”

80,000 employees registered

Speaking to The New Times, Frank Butera, the Chief Operations Officer of Good Link Solutions Ltd, the developers of Inkomane, said the platform helped in reducing issues related to illegal mining.

"In the past years, we had a lot of illegal mining operations going on across the country. But, with this platform, it [illegal mining] has tremendously reduced, because with the system, we can easily trace all the levels of the supply chain,” he said, adding:"Illegal miners now have failed to sell the minerals. It has become one of the tools that are being used to stop illegal mining.”

According to Butera, currently there are 137 mining companies, 32 mineral trading companies, and 80,000 employees registered on the platform. He said all these employees have insurance coverage.

Thomas Hubakimana, the CEO of a cassiterite and coltan mining company called Big Mining Company in Ruhango District, emphasized the impact Inkomane has had on his company which employs with over 400 workers.

"Since we started using Inkomane, we now pay salaries through bank accounts. We also make payments to RSSB and everything that labour law requires both employers and employees to do. Now, all our employees have contracts and can also make contributions to Ejo Heza as a way of saving,” he noted.

He emphasized that Inkomane helped in setting proper lines of mining activities and discouraged illegal mining activities.

"I think Inkomane came to help in fighting fraud in mining, illegal mining, and other mining activities that destroy the environment. This came to set a proper line of mining activities along with the new mining law,” he said. "It helped us to work like professionals.”

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Hubakimana emphasized that "some miners used to hide and not pay taxes,” but Inkomane’s integration with RRA services including EBM receipts helped to maintain the records of their transactions.

"Inkomane also helped in recording mining employees' details like their salaries, and it also encouraged salary payments through bank accounts,” he added.

The system also allows them to have digital tags or seals on the products.

"I think some of us were hesitant to adopt this technology because they thought it was just going to take away money without helping them in any way. You know even when Irembo started, we never understood it but we later started to see the benefits.”

Habakumana acknowledged that the platform helped in recording information and ensuring the security of documents contrary to using paper as was the case in the past.

"We used to use papers and they’d accidentally burn. But when things are kept in a digital system, it can hardly be lost,” he noted.

Habakumana emphasized that, compared to the past, mining is now done professionally and makes a great contribution to the country’s economy.

"I can encourage other miners to embrace using a digital system because it can solve a lot of problems. We should operate professionally, pay taxes, and contribute to employees' pension plans for the future because it helps to avoid a bad lifestyle after an employee retires. I wish this system had come early because I could have a tangible pension saving.”