Mike Steyn

Mike is a Founding Director of SRA. He is a well-known global expert in land acquisition & resettlement, social impact assessment and stakeholder engagement. He has over 25 years of experience working on natural resource, infrastructure and other projects, both as a consultant and in a variety of senior corporate roles in over 35 countries.

He has advised and assisted private and public sector clients and financial institutions on a range of challenging social issues, with a particular focus on land access and resettlement. He has helped clients develop corporate and project level policies and strategies, and planned, managed, engaged and negotiated on, implemented, carried out due diligence on, reviewed, monitored, audited and provided capacity building training in relation to numerous land access and resettlement projects across the globe.

Mike’s work focuses on developing practical best practice solutions appropriate to each client and project locality, based on fully understanding local context, extensive stakeholder engagement and teamwork at all project stages. Mike brings to each project a thorough understanding of the diverse components that need to be woven together to ensure successful outcomes for projects, communities and governments.

He is thoroughly familiar with the policies and standards of international lending institutions. He is co-author of ‘Land Access and Resettlement: A Guide to Best Practice’ (Greenleaf, 2015), SRA’s Insights Series on Land Access & Resettlement (2017) and ‘How miners can better manage community resettlement as demand for metals rises’ (Northern Miner and Mining.com, 2023), as well as author of SRA’s Tailings Storage Facility & Resettlement Insight Series. He has a Master’s degree in Business Administration from Henley Management College in the UK (Dissertation Title: Developing a Global Policy for Dealing with the Community as a Corporate Stakeholder as a Means of Obtaining Competitive Advantage), as well as Bachelor of Law and Bachelor of Arts (Politics) degrees from the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa.