Mining Indaba: Community Voices I The Invisible Minerals Powering Africa’s Growth

This is the second of our three Community Voices podcasts, as part of the Mining Indaba 2026 special podcast series. In this episode, we speak to Dr Matondo Estrela Garcia Cardoso, one of the winners of this year’s Community Voices competition, run by The Impact Facility and the Mining Indaba organisers. 

Development minerals like sand, clay and limestone underpin local economies across Africa, yet communities are often excluded from decisions that shape their lives.

This episode explores how trust, digitalisation and partnerships can turn mining into a driver of inclusive growth.

Speakers include:

• Assheton Stewart Carter I Executive Chair and Founder at TDi Sustainability
• Dr Matondo Estrela Garcia Cardoso I Researcher, Adviser & Consultant African Research Consortium

Dr Matondo Estrela Garcia Cardoso is an ESG professional and Senior Community Social Performance (CSP) Advisor with expertise in the mining and energy sectors. 

This episode is part of the TDi Sustainability special series of podcasts produced for the Mining Indaba event that will take place in Cape Town between 9th – 12th February 2026. Find out more about the event>

Transcript

Welcome to the Mining Indaba 2026 Series

Introducing Dr. Motondo Estrela Garcia Cardoso and Her Work

A Shared Theme: Mining, Development, and Poverty Alleviation

Assheton Stewart Carter 0:10

Hello and welcome to this special edition of Suits and Boots, the TDI sustainability podcast series in conjunction with the investing in African Mining in Darba. In this series, we discuss some of the key themes that will be covered at the 2026 Mining Indaba conference. I'm Assheton Stewart Carter, Executive Chair at TDI and board member and chief investment officer at The Impact Facility. Today we're joined by one of the winners of this year's Community Voices competition run by The Impact Facility and the Mining Indaba organizers, Dr. Motondo Estrela Garcia Cardoso, a senior community social performance advisor. Now, Dr. Cardoso is very accomplished. She holds a PhD from the Surrey Business School, where her research explored how development minerals can drive poverty alleviation and economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa, with a focus on Angola. And there we have our first connection, I think, Estrela, because my PhD was on a very similar theme, and it was entitled Mining Companies as Agents of Development. And there I was looking to see what were the development benefits of mining around mining developments and in the communities. But Estrella has filled executive roles at the Central Bank of Angola, at San Angol, at ENI, at Angostino Neto University, and the Canadian Natural Resources Limited. And she currently works with Rio Tinto, where she balances her rotation shift with mentoring and academic research. Not surprisingly, she's been recognized for her impact and leadership. Now she's been being nominated to the International Women's Forum as an International MBA Alumna success story, and of course, one of the nominatable winners of the Mining Indaba Community Voices 2026 in recognition of her impactful research and practical contributions. So it's great to have you here, Estrela, and we look forward to talking to you. Thank you. Just to begin, you've worked across academia, you've been in government and now in industry, you worked on the investment side in Angola's central bank to global mining communities. And looking back across this varied and I'm sure very interesting career so far, what experiences do you think may shape how you think about communities and mining today?

Communities as Partners: The “Social Contract” Framing

Representation and Voice: Who Speaks for “the Community”?

Dr. Motondo Estrela Garcia Cardoso 2:41

Well, thank you. This is a very interesting question. So in academia, I've actually learned how communities are often discussed in theory. For example, such as framework, indicators, and development models that has really given me the structure in terms of critical thinking, but it was still quite removed from daily activities. And obviously, working in a government, including at the central bank, I saw how national policies and macroeconomic decisions play out in people's lives, often in ways that are not immediately visible. And obviously, this has really touched me that good intention at the policy level don't always translate into real impact on ground. So today, as I move into the mining, I mean my working closely with the communities, that everything is coming connected, is truly connected, like sitting under the tree with community leaders, as giving me the overview, listening to different female youth, and traditional authorities. I realize that community are not kind of we call stakeholder, they are on a matrix form. They are partners with history, expectation, fears, and dignity. So those experiences shape how I see mining today. I might mention that they are not as an isolated technical activity, but as a social contract. So today my approach to communities and mining is deeply human. I believe sustainability starts with listening, trust, and respect. And only then do systems, standards, and strategy truly work. That's how I see, you know, when we talk about seeing the same community in a very wide seat at the table.

Assheton Stewart Carter 5:40

And it makes such good common sense, that, isn't it? That I mean you would think that all decisions would be human-centered decisions and not technocratic ones, but you're right that we do seem to have lost in many parts of the economy the ability to include people and communities in decisions and think more along the terms of economics or other kind of technical disciplines. But do you think, talking about kind of trust and social license to operate, do you think that it's ever possible to have the voices of the communities mediated through a third party? Or do we have to include them directly? How do we, you know, when we talk about communities, that in terms that is a term that covers many things, and it's difficult to have representation of all parts of any community, let alone multiple communities. So how do we include them? What's the appropriate way to include their point of view and their voice?

Dr. Motondo Estrela Garcia Cardoso 6:40

So I always prefer to refine my own experience. The breakdown usually begins before a project even starts. So when communities feel decisions are already made about them, not with them, it often shows in small but powerful signal. So what really happens, what we have been seeing, is the consultation that happens too late, because the information is not shared in technical language. The meetings are held with only a few voices in the room, or promises made by one stakeholder that others cannot honor. So in answering the question, when we look at that social license and community inclusion, that's my view. And once expectations are misaligned at the beginning of every operational change, you can delay work for decision, land access, procurement, all this becomes more like interpreted through a length of mistrust. So the issue is not only communication, it's power and participation.

Assheton Stewart Carter 8:01

That resonates strongly with me. I've seen many in my career, I see many mining operations that have not established a good relationship right at the very beginning of their operation or even when they're taking over from another mine, and it's very hard to recover a good relationship or build a good relationship after it's gone wrong at the start. But you know, you talk about the social license to operate, and that's a long-term prospect. Um, in some cases, is thinking, you know, one or two generations ahead. So, how does a mine and how does the relationship, maybe I should say, between a mining operation and community continue to be sustained throughout its life?

Three Essentials: Shared Decision-Making, Transparency, Local Opportunity

Dr. Motondo Estrela Garcia Cardoso 8:50

Well, from my point of view, I always insist as well that social license is not a document or a one-off approval. It's a long-term relationship. In practice, earning and keeping should look like three things shared decision making, not just a consultation, because communities they should have a real say in what benefit means locally and how priorities are chosen. And uh, one of the big issues as well is when you look at the consistency and transparency because automatically it plans change, because is what I said at the beginning, you know, explain earlier, explain honestly, and explain in ways people understand. So the language of communication, it's important to kind of trust grows when people feel respected enough to be told the truth. So the third or three things that I've mentioned from is the fair value and local opportunity: job skills, local procurement, grievance mechanism that work and visible development outcome. So when I look at those three things, still, I'm just talking about this consistency and transparency and the shared decision making that is connected, not as a charity but as a shared value. And I think we are missing a point when we talk about the social license to operate. Because in terms of how social performance moves beyond compliance, is where it becomes strategic. And then we get questions like in terms of compliance, ask, did we meet the standard? And then in terms of resilience, did we reduce the risk and strengthen relationships so the operation can last? So, in my own experience, when social performance is treated as a core business function, it actually strengthened what I call the mineral security because stable relationships always reduce that disruption, prevent escalation, and obviously create predictability for investors, government, and community. And automatically, it also strengthens long-term stability because communities who feel included are more likely to protect, not resist the operation. So for me, the shift is always simple. Social performance should be measured not only by activities that have been delivered, but by the outcome like trust level, conflict prevention, local economic participation, and the speed that way we can see that fairness of problem solving. That's what turns the social license into resilience and resilience into long-term value for everyone.

Assheton Stewart Carter 12:30

And I'll come back to that in a minute, but there's something you mentioned in your opening remarks about power and participation. And um, I remember meeting and working on Robert Chambers, who's the Emeritus Professor at Sussex University, who wrote a lot on power and participation. Um, and I think you might have been in a program which drew on his work when you were doing your PhD there. And I kind of think that that's quite a difficult thing to bring into a mining company, sharing your power and having communities participate in decisions. How do you make the case within the mining organizations that in order to build trust and long-term security with the communities, they need to give up a little bit of their control or some of their management practices they might be accustomed to?

Dr. Motondo Estrela Garcia Cardoso 13:23

So, what from my own experience, what I've been also learning from the communities is the local procurement. We don't really talk about local procurement, it's more like the social inclusion. They need to be feeling part of the company and uh how it has been done in my work across Africa and uh my specific case in Angola was during the engagement process is to bring conversation on such initiatives. But to do that, you need to engage, you need to build that what I said, really resiliency into a long-term communication. And it's something I feel during my field work while I was really collecting my data for my PhD, was it took me like almost eight months to understand the value, the culture, and that's where I felt the local procurement, what today we call probably social inclusion, it's important by using the community voice and scaling up based on the knowledge, initiatives that speak to the problems they are facing. So for me, that's what I call participation. It's something that you don't see it outside the box, but it has to be while you are on the ground, you know, dealing with every issue every day. And this is probably what today I see that needs to also be bring in terms of policies. We are not talking about this local economic participation whereby the communities, based on the challenges they go through, we can actually align the solution and fairness of problem solving. That's how I see when we talk about participation based on my own experience. I hope I made it clear.

Assheton Stewart Carter 15:48

I think you make it very clear, and I'm sure that's um your ability to make things clear is probably part of the reason of your success to get this into organizations. And I think what you say is very true in my experience, that you know, if you want to build trust with anybody, but with communities around an industrial development in particular, you need to spend time with them. It's not something you can just dash in and dash out and have one town hall meeting expect to come to a solution around. You need to be present and return and keep the conversation going, be consistent and show that you're genuine in your intentions. Um, so I'm curious, going back to the question on the resiliency, you have to make the case for this um longitudinal approach within your organization. And you said that it's about security of the asset itself. How do you make that case to your senior management? How do you make the case that if they don't build good relationships, it could interrupt the cash flow or the operations?

Dr. Motondo Estrela Garcia Cardoso 16:59

So in every operation, and is what I've been seeing uh across my research, across my daily activities and engaging with different stakeholders is assessing the risk before you engage. And uh I'm always going back to the real cases I face in my own country, as when you are entering a specific community, we have entry protocols where resilience is one of the questions. It's like I always ask, but resilience, how can I be resilient with the people whereby they don't need much, but they just want to be heard. So it's a question of asking how we reduce the risk and strengthen relationships or the operations that the company is aligning, whether it's uh for critical mineral projects, whether for those strategic we call diamond projects, are aligned with the community needs because what I've been identified so far when I engage with chief we call Sobat, the chief of the village, is it'll give you an overview of the culture, how they live. And you need to be able to be resilient, even yourself, because it's all about managing expectation and telling them the truth, what the company intention, what they need to do, but obviously the priority is to know how the communities around the operational areas live, what they do, whether there is any risk associated to the concession area. So that's where I bring those mineral security, is when social performance is really treated as a core business function because stability it through reducing those kinds of disruption. We have seen cases where we had to prevent escalation and automatically create a safe environment inside the community, but again, as I said, it can only be done if that engagement process and the stakeholder mapping is well done, and we can only do it through identifying those resilience associated risk, knowing the culture, knowing your communities, knowing the language you're going to communicate, it's very important as well. So at the end of the day, what you really build is the trust, and automatically, once you build up the trust, you can even secure the social license to operate, and automatically is through all resilience, respect, and knowing that he this space probably doesn't belong to me, but based on the long-term relationship I'm building, I'm also automatically building that stability because the community they feel they are part, they're integrated, they're included into the company strategy. So it's a process of engaging, of knowing, of being resilient, and also be able to listen.

Assheton Stewart Carter 21:01

Thank you for that. And I think one word stood out for me, though, is stability as a good way to explain the business case to senior management. I don't think I can count the number of times that my managers said to me, Ashton, we don't want any surprises. So understanding and allowing communities to be understood, I think is a key part of what you're saying. Nowadays, Estrella, we hear a lot about digitalization, digitalization of almost everything. But I was at a panel the other day at a conference, and we're talking about community relations and community assessments, and there is a general consensus this is one area where digitalization didn't have a part to play. But I think you have a different view on this, and you have used digitalization as an enabler for stronger partnerships. Could you give us a little bit of an explanation of how you think it can be? Used and some maybe some examples of how you used technology in community engagement.

Beyond Tonnes Extracted: What “Progress” Should Be Measured By

Dr. Motondo Estrela Garcia Cardoso 22:08

Okay, so a very clear example is when I read the article, I referred to the video on Jamaica example. What struck me most was not the technology itself, but how it was used to rebalance the community relationship. So the digital platform were applied to improve transparency, track commitment, and make information accessible to communities in real time. Not only to regulate our companies. So the relevance for it, I looked at African mining context, is kind of very strong because many of the challenges community face are not about lack of resources, but again about lack of visibility, accountability, and trust. And for example, in Africa, digital tools can help shift power dynamics by democratizing information. And when community can see project timelines as well, employment opportunity, grievance processes, or environmental dating format, that they can be able to understand and speak to the issue. So they move from being passive recipients to informed participants. And those simple tools, such as mobile platform, SM systems, digital resistors, payment system, can obviously reduce manipulation and capture what I said at the beginning: the inclusion, feeling like okay, we are part of the operation process as well. So that's how I see digitalization as a practical partnership model. But again, technology alone is not enough. We need to talk about digital skills that must be paired with diverse forms of training, financial literacy, governance, health and safety, entrepreneurship and leadership. This combination is what creates again resilience beyond the life of a man, because once you start engaging with a community, you can actually identify the set of skills they have. But because of lack of training, the forms of trainings I've mentioned, obviously they get stuck. So when people gain those transferable skills, they're better able to adapt, to start any type of business, to engage even with local authority and participate in the economy long after closure. So in that sense, I see digitalization becoming a bridge between mining and sustainable development, not a short-term fix. And in terms of practical partnership model, the most effective ones I've seen share three features. The first one is clear and share rules between communities, companies, and the state with no ambiguity about responsibility. The second one I remember is core design development plans when priorities are agreed jointly and reviewed while you are engaging regularly with communities. And the third, I might say, mechanism for accountability. It's actually often supported by digital tools that allow or allow all parties to track progress and raise any concern at each level of the project. But it always be done, it has to be done at the beginning, where you engage, where you are starting to know the people around the concession area. So the mechanisms is very important for accountability. Again, when partnerships are built this way, mining stop being a transactional activities and becomes a platform for long-term collaboration. And obviously, that is how trust is rebuilt. Not through promising, but through systems that people can see, access, and influence.

Assheton Stewart Carter 27:18

That again is very, very clear. And I think you laid out some good examples where technology can enable, but you also said that technology isn't a replacement for building trust. You still need that person-to-person engagement, but it can be a facilitating tool. And to be an effective tool, you need to be able to master it. So we can't be lazy users. We have to be active and more sophisticated users of technology. Otherwise, it might actually be a result that we don't like as much, and it is not enabling, but in fact reducing the trust. One of the statements that you made in your video, I really liked it, was that you're but you believe that progress shouldn't only be measured in tons of or minerals extracted. What indicators should governments and companies then be using instead to judge the success of a mineral development?

Dr. Motondo Estrela Garcia Cardoso 28:17

Well, thank you. When I say progress should only be measured in tons extracted, I mean that volume tells us what we took, not what we left behind. And from my experience, government and companies should be looking at indicators such as the good quality of local jobs created, the skills transferred, the strength of local supplies, and the level of community trust. And something as well, perhaps we don't really communicate well is how effectively grievance are resolved. So we should also be measuring whether communities are better off at closure than were at the start of the project. And economically, socially, and institutionally, those are the metrics that tell us whether mining has truly contributed to development. And what really gives me that confidence about the future that we are all talking about in African mining that obviously leads us to development, it's important for us to pause and look at those indicators. They are very important for a call to action and to improve again the policies we are all working, updating. And without research, without measuring the indicators I've mentioned, I don't think we're gonna get it right. So it's work in progress, but at the same time, I keep telling people it's important to engage, it's important to understand the culture, it's important to respect the communities before starting, because that's going to impact even at the closure process at the end of your project. So those metrics they have to be aligned with the everyday conversation, company strategy, company objective, performance appraisal, we all talk about today. It has to be aligned with the community's voice.

Assheton Stewart Carter 31:01

And presumably we'd want these performance measures to be read by the investors, the mine managers, the off-take partners, and be seen in an integrated scorecards, so not pushed off to not pushed off to one side. I think very sadly, I'm looking at the clock, and we might have come to the end of our time today, but you have won this very um appropriately this wonderful award to go to the Indaba. And the theme at the Indaba this year is working together or partnerships stronger together. That's what the theme is: stronger together and partnerships. What do you hope to achieve at this year's Indaba when you're there?

Dr. Motondo Estrela Garcia Cardoso 31:45

Well, personally, what I would like to get out of this year Mining Indaba is connection with purpose. I want to exchange the practical ideas, experiences I have, challenge assumption, and help ensure that community voices, especially from Africa, are not just present but influential. If I live in Daba knowing that one partnership was strengthened, one blind stop was addressed, or one mindset shifted, then I would consider that a real progress.

Assheton Stewart Carter 32:28

Wonderful. And Estrela, we've heard a lot about critical minerals, which are generally understood to be those minerals that can contribute to the energy transition globally. But also development minerals, things like sand, clay, limestone, and granite play an important part in development, especially local development. Can you give us some of your thoughts on that?

Closing Thanks and See You at Mining Indaba 2026

Dr. Motondo Estrela Garcia Cardoso 32:53

What gives me confidence about the future for African mining is that development minerals sit exactly at the intersection of people, place, and progress. They are local by nature, labor-intensive, and deeply connected to housing, infrastructure, and urban growth. So if governed well, they can formalize livelihood, strengthen local economies, and automatically create pathways for women and youth to participate meaningfully. So the idea of stronger together becomes real when we move extractive thinking to coordination where communities, states, and companies jointly design outcome, not just to manage impact. So, and for me, that's what this moment matters. We have better dates, better tools, and more honest conversation that we did a decade ago. So the opportunity now is to connect policy, practice, and people and development minera are a powerful place to start. Thank you.

Assheton Stewart Carter 34:13

Thank you once again, Dr. Matondo Estrela Garcia Cardosa for joining us today. And to our listeners, please check out the rest of this special series of Mining Indaba podcasts on the TDI Sustainability Suits and Boots podcast channel. I really do look forward to seeing you all at the event and meeting in person Dr. Cordosa and hearing from her and others who have uh who have won awards in the Community Voices 2026. I'm Assheton Carter and thank you for listening.