Turning demining into an industry

By 2023 the arithmetic was clear. The contaminated area was too large for a handful of humanitarian operators working to donor grants, however good they were. The task needed industrial scale.

So the sector was restructured. A national mine action authority was established to set standards, accredit operators and hold the survey database. Certification was opened to commercial companies, which could then be contracted — by the state, by donors, by landowners — to clear defined areas to a defined standard, with verification and documented handover.

What partners funded

Mechanical demining machines, detection equipment, protective gear, training centres, and the certification and quality assurance system itself, which is the part that makes the rest trustworthy.

There is a real economy here now: operators, technicians, machine maintenance, training. That is what a country needs when a job will take decades. Building an industry rather than running a programme was the correct structural decision, and it was taken early.