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In a landmark development poised to advance the formalisation and safety of Zimbabwe’s Artisanal and Small-scale Mining (ASM) sector, the Zimbabwe Miners Federation (ZMF) and the Association of Mine Surveyors of Zimbabwe (AMSZ) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) aimed at enhancing geospatial compliance, mine safety, and planning through professional mine surveying services, Mining Zimbabwe can report.
By Rudairo Mapuranga
The MoU was signed at the ZMF Head Offices in Harare on Thursday, with ZMF Chief Executive Officer Mr Wellington Takavarasha and AMSZ President Mr Stewart Gumbi officiating the ceremony.
The partnership comes at a time when the Ministry of Mines and Mining Development has stepped up enforcement of geospatial compliance, declaring that no mine will be registered without proper survey-grade coordinates, as per the new pegging regulations under the Mining Cadastre Information Management System (MCIMS).
Addressing the Informality Gap: From Uncharted Workings to Digitally Compliant Mines
Zimbabwe’s ASM sector, which contributed approximately 60% of national gold deliveries in 2024, remains largely informal, with thousands of operations working without certified plans, updated boundaries, or statutory survey documentation. The lack of formal mine planning poses significant risks — both in terms of safety and investment readiness.
Through this partnership, AMSZ will offer professional mine surveying services that include:
Boundary definition and demarcation of claims
Surface and underground survey mapping
Preparation of statutory mine plans
Resource and production tracking through volumetric and tonnage monitoring
“Our partnership with ZMF supports access to credible mine surveying services, which are critically needed for compliance, formalisation, and meeting investor requirements,” said AMSZ President Mr Stewart Gumbi. “The goal is to ensure that even the smallest miner operates within globally accepted standards.”
Safety and Mine Rescue: The Hidden Cost of Informality
When mine accidents occur — such as ground collapses or shaft inundations — the absence of updated mine plans becomes a life-threatening barrier for mine rescue teams.
“Without surveyed layouts and up-to-date development plans, emergency response becomes guesswork,” Gumbi warned. “We cannot send rescue teams into undocumented voids where the stability, depth, or structure of workings is unknown.”
Surveyed and documented mine layouts allow for ventilation modelling, safe escape route mapping, and geotechnical risk assessments — all of which are vital in underground mining environments. Furthermore, mine plans help responders determine where trapped miners might be located and what access points are feasible for rescue.
Technical Compliance: Ventilation, Grades, and Assay Planning
In underground mining, particularly in narrow reef gold operations common in ASM, ventilation design is a matter of life and death. Without survey data, it’s impossible to model airflow paths or identify areas of potential fume build-up or oxygen depletion. Surveyors play a vital role in designing ventilation circuits that ensure air reaches all faces, minimising risk from blasting fumes, diesel exhausts, and heat stress.
Similarly, mine gradients (surveyed slopes) directly influence water drainage and material transport. Without grade measurements, miners may unknowingly create unsafe inclinations, increasing the risk of shaft failures or runaway ore carts.
Mine surveyors also support assay plan development, which links sampling locations to geospatial coordinates, allowing for accurate grade estimation, ore control, and mineable resource planning. These are essential for any operation looking to scale up or attract capital investment.
Formalisation and Compliance in the New Digital Era
The MoU aligns with the Ministry of Mines’ ongoing drive to digitalise mining operations through the MCIMS, which now mandates that all claim holders submit survey-grade coordinates during pegging and mine registration. This shift, announced earlier this year, enforces geospatial compliance and is a key milestone in improving the integrity of Zimbabwe’s mineral database.
“Formalisation begins with the plan. Without a plan, there’s no safety, no investment, and no future,” said Takavarasha. “We are now saying every miner, regardless of scale, must know where they are mining, what they are mining, and how they are developing their workings.”
Beyond Compliance: A Pathway to Economic Growth
This partnership is more than a regulatory requirement; it is a catalyst for economic development. Surveyed mines can access bank financing, attract joint venture partners, and participate in mineral resource certification — all of which are necessary steps for the sector to move from subsistence mining to industrial-scale operations.
“Supporting ASM is supporting Zimbabwe’s economic growth,” Gumbi added. “Our sector has great potential to grow from small to medium and even large-scale operations. But this growth must be based on proper technical foundations.”
