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Africa Mining

Niger’s coup uncovers strategic resource tensions in West Africa – by Robert Bociaga (Arab News – August 6, 2023)

https://www.arabnews.com/

JUBA, South Sudan: Last week’s coup in Niger ushered in a state of diplomatic and security confusion in the West African region that surpassed previous coups. The unexpected move by the Economic Community of West African States to consider the use of force to remove the junta from Niamey added a new dimension to the crisis.

Despite negotiations, the junta remains steadfast in its resolve to stay in power, further complicating the situation. Adding to the complexity, neighboring juntas in Guinea, Mali, and Burkina Faso have pledged to support the Nigerien junta, making the situation potentially explosive.

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The new commodity superpowers – by Leslie Hook, Harry Dempsey and Ciara Nugent in Buenos Aires (Financial Times – August 7, 2023)

https://www.ft.com/

In the first part of a series, countries that produce the metals central to the energy transition want to rewrite the rules of mineral extraction

The red-brown landscape of Tenke-Fungurume, one of the world’s largest copper and cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo, is covered by tens of thousands of dusty sacks. The bags stacked up by the roadside and piled next to buildings contain a stash of cobalt hydroxide powder equivalent to almost a tenth of the world’s annual consumption — and worth about half a billion dollars.

The haphazard stockpiles of this bright green powder, a key ingredient in electric car batteries, point to how the DRC, the world’s largest producer of cobalt, is starting to flex its muscles when it comes to the metals needed for the energy transition.

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South Africa’s mining output falls further belowpre-pan demic levels – by Nelson Banya (Reuters – August 7, 2023)

https://www.reuters.com/

Aug 7 (Reuters) – South Africa’s mining output has fallen further below pre-pandemic levels due to persistent electricity outages and rail disruptions, industry data shows, threatening dividend payouts to investors.

South Africa is the world’s biggest producer of platinum and chrome and a leading producer of gold and diamonds. But the industry has been shrinking for years as ore grades decline and output was disrupted in 2020 when COVID-19 lockdowns impacted operations.

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The Long Arm of the Kremlin and the Politics of Uranium – by Javier Blas (Washington Post/Bloomberg – August 3, 2023)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/

The town of Arlit, a desolate settlement on the southern fringes of the Sahara, is the improbable ground zero of a new geopolitical tussle: the fight for the control of uranium, the fuel that powers the nuclear industry. It was there, in the arid ranges of northern Niger, where French geologists found the radioactive mineral in the 1950s.

Since then, French state-owned companies have dug it out from their former colony, transforming Niger into the world’s seventh-largest producer. In 2022, the mines surrounding Arlit accounted for 25% of all European Union uranium imports. Now, a coup d’Etat in the impoverished west African nation has put that flow in jeopardy.

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Despite Rift With Putin, the Wagner Group’s Global Reach is Growing – by Vera Bergengruen (Time Magazine – August 2, 2023)

https://time.com/

Amonth after Yevgeny Prigozhin’s dramatic short-lived rebellion against Russian President Vladimir Putin, the mercenary leader was back to business as usual. After a military coup in Niger, Prigozhin pitched his paramilitary Wagner Group as the solution to the West African nation’s security crisis. “A thousand Wagner fighters are able to restore order and destroy terrorists,” Prigozhin said on Telegram July 27, “preventing them from harming the civilian population.”

The message was a clear sign that Wagner is likely to remain a global force in spite of its rift with the Russian state and its leader’s alleged exile to Belarus. A new report exclusively shared with TIME by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), a conflict-monitoring group that tracks political violence worldwide, sheds new light on just how deeply Wagner is embedded across Central and West Africa, where it is training local militias and propping up fragile governments allied with Russia in exchange for lucrative mineral rights.

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Niger coup raises questions about uranium dependence (AFP/France24 – August 1, 2023)

https://www.france24.com/en/

Paris (AFP) – The military coup in Niger last week raises the question of Europe’s dependency on uranium mined in the West African nation for its nuclear power plants. France’s nuclear fuel firm Orano, formerly part of Areva, operates a uranium mine in the north of the country, employing some 900 mostly Nigeran staff.

The company said last week that it was monitoring the situation closely but that the seizure of power by the military had not for the moment affected the delivery of uranium supplies. Niger accounts for only a small percentage of global production of natural uranium.

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The Race for Resources: China and Russia Are Beating the West in Africa – by Heiner Hoffmann, Maximilian Popp and Fritz Schaap (Spiegel International – August 2, 2023)

https://www.spiegel.de/

This week, leaders from 17 African countries will be guests of Vladimir Putin. Alongside Russia, all the major powers are vying for influence and raw materials on the continent. The conditions are increasingly dictated by the Africans themselves, with the West often coming away empty-handed.

African leaders don’t often travel by train. But in mid-June, four heads of government from Africa boarded a train in Poland headed for Ukraine. In a group photo, the travelers look a bit lost in the imposing compartment, with only the leader of the mission, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, offering a contented smile.

The delegation traveling with Ramaphosa wanted to achieve what many large and middle powers had thus far failed to accomplish: to end the war between Russia and Ukraine. The Africans met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv and later with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.

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Niger coup sparks concerns about French, EU uranium dependency – by Giorgio Leali (Politico EU – July 31, 2023)

https://www.politico.eu/

The military coup in Niger is raising fears, especially in France, over its potential impact on the import of uranium to power nuclear plants.

Niger supplies 15 percent of France’s uranium needs and accounts for a fifth of the EU’s total uranium imports. Orano, France’s state-controlled nuclear fuel producer, is continuing its activities in Niger and monitoring the situation, a company spokesperson said in a statement emailed to POLITICO, stressing that “our priority is to maintain the safety of our employees in the country.”

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What the Niger coup means for China’s presence in the Sahel region – by (South China Morning Post – July 31, 2023)

https://www.scmp.com/

Last week’s military coup in Niger is adding to the growing pains for China’s investments in the Sahel region. On Wednesday, a group of soldiers from the presidential guard detained Nigerien President Mohamed Bazoum, citing a worsening security and economic situation.

In the past three years there have also been coups in Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali, Chad and Sudan, all countries where China has extensive economic interests especially in the mining and petroleum industries and is looking to extend its multibillion-dollar trade and investment scheme, the Belt and Road Initiative.

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What’s Driving Coups in Niger and Across West Africa? – by Neil Munshi (Bloomberg/Washington Post – July 27, 2023)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/

Members of Niger’s presidential guard have detained the leader of the uranium-rich country, a linchpin in the fight by US, French and African forces against the spread of Islamist militancy across the Sahel region.

The attempted coup follows five successful ones in the past three years across the impoverished region. If the latest power grab succeeds, it would create a strip of military-run countries stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea — most of which are more closely aligned to Russia than to the West.

1. What happened in Niger?

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The Stainless-Steel Boom Is Tearing a South African Mining Region Apart – by Kimon de Greef (Bloomberg News – July 24, 2023)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Areas with massive chrome ore deposits have become scarred, dystopian free-for-alls.

Twenty-five years ago, to get to school in the morning, Godfrey Molwana would walk 2 miles from his home in Witrandjie, a small village in South Africa. His route passed through communal grazing lands for cattle and goats—a rolling expanse of acacia trees and hardy shrubs, interspersed with the corn plots of subsistence farmers. Some families had graves on the land. “This area was for everyone,” Molwana recalled.

Close to the village lay the remains of a chrome mine, with derelict buildings and dumps of discarded ore where children from the community would play. Chrome is essential for manufacturing stainless steel. South Africa has the largest deposits in the world, but this mine, no longer profitable, had been shuttered for decades. Some older men in the community had worked there as laborers, earning the low wages designated for Black people during apartheid.

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UAE signs deal to develop mines in eastern DR Congo (Al Jazeera – July 18, 2023)

https://www.aljazeera.com/

The agreement is reached after the DRC signed a 25-year contract in December with a UAE firm over export rights for artisanally mined ores.

The United Arab Emirates has signed a $1.9bn deal with a state mining company in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to develop at least four mines in the African country’s turbulent east, the Congolese presidency says.

President Felix Tshisekedi’s office said on Monday that an Emirati government delegation had signed the partnership in the capital, Kinshasa, with Societe Aurifere du Kivu et du Maniema (Sakima). The deal would see the “construction of more than 4 industrial mines” in the provinces of South Kivu and Maniema, according to the statement.

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OPINION: How our green transition and hunger for battery metals devastate Africa and the Congo – by Siddharth Kara (Globe and Mail – July 22, 2023)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Siddharth Kara is associate professor of human trafficking and modern slavery at Nottingham University and the author of Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives.

During one of my trips to the Congo, I met Jolie in her small home of cracked brick walls and rusted roofing in the cobalt-mining town of Kolwezi. Although Jolie had invited me to her home that day to discuss her story, the moment I arrived it felt as if she regretted my presence. She did not wish to speak at length.

To prevent Jolie and everyone else I’ve interviewed from being identified and targeted for reprisal, I have used pseudonyms for them and am withholding the dates on which we met. This is also to protect my continuing research, which delves into the often unseen, yet heavy cost that the Global South pays for the First World’s ideals and conveniences.

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Tanzania unlawfully expropriated Ntaka Hill nickel project, tribunal finds, awards miner $109m – by Amanda Stutt (Mining.com – July 18, 2023)

https://www.mining.com/

Indiana Resources (ASX: IDA) announced Tuesday that its dispute with the United Republic of Tanzania, which was the subject of arbitration through the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes, part of the World Bank, has been settled, with $109.5 million awarded to the company.

The Tribunal delivered the award on July 14 and unanimously found that Tanzania had unlawfully expropriated the Ntaka Hill nickel project on January 10, 2018 in breach of the UK-Tanzania Bilateral Investment Treaty.

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Lucara provides Karowe underground expansion project update – by Will Owen (Global Mining Review – July 19, 2023)

https://www.globalminingreview.com/

Lucara Diamond Corp. has provided an update on the Karowe Underground Expansion project (the UGP). The Karowe UGP is designed to access the highest value portion of the Karowe orebody, extend mine life to at least 2040 and deliver approximately US$4 billion in additional revenues using conservative diamond price assumptions which are unescalated and exclude exceptional stone revenues.

Management initiated an update to the UGP schedule and budget in response to slower than planned ramp up to expected sinking rates, and, to account for time incurred to date, as well as for anticipated future grouting programs.

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