Associations between mining projects and socio-economic determinants of health in sub-Saharan Africa

Natural resource extraction projects (NREPs) have the potential to improve socio-economic determinants of health and hence contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) of the 2030 Agenda. At the same time, there is a large body of evidence showing that NREPs often have negative effects on environmental, social and economic determinants of health, leading to alterations in the disease burden in affected communities. The overarching objective of this thesis is to contribute to a better understanding of the socioeconomic impacts of NREPs on communities and health systems in African countries.
Through the conduct of a systematic scoping literature review it became evident that economic analysis of impacts associated with natural resource extraction projects is a small field of published research. This unfortunately hinders the ability to better exploit the benefits to local communities and governments while minimizing the negative externalities. The analysis of data from repeated cross-sectional health surveys (2011, 2015 and 2019) that were conducted as part of the monitoring and evaluation step of a health impact assessment (HIA) of a large copper mine in Zambia revealed significant effects of the project on socioeconomic determinants of health and on the average wealth in communities directly affected by the mine than in comparison communities.