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Africa Mining

Mali catastrophe accelerating under junta rule (Africa Center for Strategic Studies/Defence Web – July 20, 2023)

https://www.defenceweb.co.za/

The threat of militant Islamist groups is spreading to all parts of Mali as the military junta stakes its claim to stay in power indefinitely. The threat from militant Islamist groups in Mali continues to escalate in tempo and scale. With the military junta’s continued exclusion of other domestic political actors and alienation of regional and international security partners, the prospect of Mali’s collapse grows increasingly likely.

Mali is on pace to see over 1 000 violent events involving militant Islamist groups in 2023, eclipsing last year’s record levels of violence and a nearly three-fold increase from when the junta seized power in 2020. Approximately 6 150 km2 of Malian territory were swept up in militant Islamist violence in the first 6 months of 2023, compared to 5,200 km2 in the previous 6 months (an increase of 18 percent).

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Zimbabwe’s $1 Billion Lithium Plan Faces Setback as Chinese Partner Cuts Stake – by Antony Sguazzin (Bloomberg News – July 19, 2023)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

(Bloomberg) — South Africa’s Moti Group said a Chinese company with which it planned to develop a $1 billion lithium processing plant in Zimbabwe was halving its stake in the venture, dealing the project a potential blow.

Moti Group’s Pulserate Investments holds a 10,000 hectare (24,710-acre) lithium exploration concession in the northeast of the country, Africa’s biggest producer of the metal according to the US Geological Survey.

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No more plundering: Can Africa take control in green mineral rush? – by BUKOLA ADEBAYO, JOANNA GILL AND KIM HARRISBERG (Japan Times – July 19, 2023)

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/

JOHANNESBURG/LAGOS/BRUSSELS – From Zimbabwe’s lithium-rich rocks to Democratic Republic of Congo’s cobalt, minerals critical for clean energy technologies are increasingly in demand from Africa’s trade partners as part of the global green transition from planet-warming fossil fuels.

Yet on a continent long blighted by the so-called “resource curse” — whereby nations rich in oil or gold, for example, have failed to convert this into wider prosperity — governments have increasingly restricted or banned mineral exports in recent years in a bid to boost processing and retain more of the gains. This strategy could backfire, however, by deterring foreign investment, several analysts said.

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NEWS RELEASE: Families Depend on Income from Child Labour in Congo’s Cobalt Mines to Stave Off Hunger

Efforts to eliminate child labour in cobalt supply chains need to address root causes or risk further jeopardizing children’s safety and well-being

OTTAWA, Canada, July 14, 2023/ — IMPACT’s (www.ImpactTransform.org) new research reveals how poverty is a driving force behind child labour in Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) artisanal cobalt mines.

Among rising costs, families are struggling to make ends meet. Many are going hungry. Children work when families get desperate, leading to a reliance on income from child labour to cover basic needs like food, clothing, or school fees.

In its latest research report, How Households Depend on Children’s Income: The Case for Improving Women’s Livelihoods to Eliminate Child Labour in Democratic Republic of Congo’s Cobalt Sector (https://apo-opa.info/3rkYTBg), IMPACT finds that families depend most on women’s income. When mothers are struggling, children step in to help. Some are encouraged by their parents, or independently follow their siblings, friends, and neighbours.

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Why Africa bleeds diamond revenues – by Neusa e Silva (DW.com – February 20, 2023)

https://www.dw.com/en/

Africa holds mineral wealth with diverse commodities that are sought after the world over. In the diamond industry, local communities miss out on profits despite multilateral certification measures.

In diamond-rich parts of Africa, the revenue generated from mineral extraction does little to improve quality of life for the people who live in those countries, with Botswana being the only exception. Instead of uplifting communities through mineral riches, many people find themselves stuck in a vicious cycle of exploitation and abuse.

DW asked diamond industry insiders and experts why the extraction of the gemstones fails to result in local socioeconomic benefits.

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Pure-play nickel company Lifezone Metals rises on NYSE debut – by Staff (Mining.com – July 6, 2023)

https://www.mining.com/

Battery metals development company Lifezone Metals (NYSE: LZM) debuted on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday following the business combination between special purpose acquisition company GoGreen Investments and Lifezone Holdings.

The transaction netted the company gross proceeds of $86.6 million, including approximately $70.2 million from a private investment in public equity and the receipt of approximately $16.4 million of cash from GoGreen’s trust account, net of redemptions.

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When It Comes to Rubies, Is Mozambique the New Star? – by Nazanin Lankarani (New York Times – July 2, 2023)

https://www.nytimes.com/

The $34.8 million auction price for a gem discovered in the East African country has the jewelry industry buzzing.

Rubies are like caviar: Their origin is an important part of their market value. Until a month ago, anyone interested in buying a big ruby knew with certainty that Myanmar, formerly called Burma, produced the most valuable stones.

For eight centuries the gems in a deep red shade known as “pigeon’s blood” found in the legendary Mogok mines had reigned supreme, attracting prices far higher than rubies from Southeast Asian countries like Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam or East African countries such as Madagascar, Tanzania and Kenya.

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Cobalt Red: a regressive, deeply flawed account of Congo’s mining industry – by Sarah Katz-Lavigne and Espérant Mwishamali Lukobo (Open Democracy – July 3, 2023)

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/

Billed as an exposé, Cobalt Red simply rehashes old stereotypes and colonial perceptions of the DRC

Cobalt Red: how the blood of the Congo powers our lives, by Siddharth Kara, has been making waves. Released in April and tailored for a non-specialist audience, it has quickly become a New York Times and Publishers Weekly bestseller, as well as a bestseller in Amazon’s African Politics category.

The book centres on the mineral cobalt, currently sought after the world over for the production of high-end batteries. More than 70% of the world’s supply originates from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Kara’s project, he says, is to expose the trade’s dirty secrets for all of us to see.

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US measure would ban products containing mineral mined with child labor in Congo – by Taiwo Adebayo (ABC News/Associated Press – July 3, 2023)

https://abcnews.go.com/

New U.S. legislation would ban imported products containing critical green transition minerals mined by child labor in Congo

ABUJA, Nigeria — A measure has been introduced in the U.S. House to ban imported products containing minerals critical to electric vehicle batteries but mined through child labor and other abusive conditions in Congo, where China has enormous mining stakes.

The bill targets China, which sponsor Republican Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey says uses forced labor and exploits children to mine cobalt in the impoverished but resource-rich central African country.

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Wagner’s real money never came from diamonds and gold – by Ellen Ioanes (Vox.com – July 2, 2023)

https://www.vox.com/

Wagner’s businesses in Africa isolate and create dependent economies, not funding for private armies.

The US Treasury Department on Tuesday sanctioned gold and diamond mining concerns connected to the Wagner group in Mali and the Central African Republic after Yevgeny Prigozhin, the mercenary group’s founder, attempted to stage a mutiny in Russia last weekend.

The gold and diamond mining enterprises, as well as a UAE-based distributor and a Russian company that the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) says is involved in the scheme, serve to enrich some members of Wagner and their collaborators in Russia and the African countries where they have a foothold. However, the amount the group earns from its illicit mining activities is negligible compared to its significant funding from the Russian government.

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China jumps ahead in the rush to secure lithium from Africa – by Annie Lee (Bloomberg News – July 3, 2023)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

China’s early move to tap new centers of lithium supply across Africa is reaping rewards, helping the top electric-vehicle battery producer navigate a tight market for the key metal.

Spurred by a flurry of investment from Chinese companies, mines across the continent are forecast to increase production of lithium raw materials more than 30-fold from last year’s volume by 2027, according to S&P Global Commodity Insights. Africa will account for 12% of global supply by then, compared with 1% in 2022.

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‘Movement’ detected at South African mine where dozens suspected dead, but no search operation yet – by Gerald Imray (National Post/Associated Press – June 27, 2023)

https://nationalpost.com/

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — South African authorities have detected “movement” underground at a shuttered gold mine where they believe at least 31 illegal miners died in a suspected gas explosion last month, raising the very slim possibility that there may be survivors, officials said.

Officials also said it’s likely that there were more illegal miners underground than initially thought and the death count will be higher than 31. But a search operation at the disused Virginia gold mine in the central city of Welkom has not yet been launched because of the dangerously high levels of methane gas still present in the mine, which means there could be more explosions.

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Where Does Wagner Get Its Money? How Russia’s Mercenaries-Turned-Rebels Earned Millions From Contracts And Mining Deals. – by Ana Faguy (Forbes Magazine – June 25, 2023)

https://www.forbes.com/

The Wagner mercenary group shifted from assisting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to briefly rebelling against President Vladimir Putin this weekend, a dramatic shift after the group and its owner—oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin—amassed power and reportedly earned hundreds of millions of dollars by securing Russian government contracts, capitalizing on other nations’ natural resources and backing unstable regimes.

The Wagner Group has offered security services to scores of weak and war-torn African and Middle Eastern countries, and companies allegedly linked to Prigozhin generated $250 million from natural resources in those nations in the four years before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, an investigation from the Financial Times found.

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Largest Ruby Ever to Come to Auction Sells for Record-Breaking $34.8 Million – by Andy Corbley (Good News Network – June 23, 2023)

Good News, Inspiring, Positive Stories

Unearthed by miners in Mozambique last July, a 55.22-carat ruby has just sold for a record-breaking $34.8 million. Dubbed the Estrela di Fura in the country’s official language of Portuguese, it was cut and polished into a symmetrical shape of deep red down from its rough carat count of 101.

Sotheby’s, which handled the sale, described the stone as “exceedingly rare” and “the most valuable and important” ruby ever to go under the hammer. It was discovered in one of the mines of Canadian firm Fura Gems, whose CEO Dev Shetty said a stone of that size was “unprecedented”

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Lines through the lake: Why the Congo-Rwanda border can’t be redrawn – by Gillian Mathys (African Arguments – May 2, 2023)

https://africanarguments.org/

Long-standing cultural affinities of Rwandophones in the Great Lakes may appear to bolster Kigali’s historical claims to parts of eastern Congo, but it’s more complicated than it seems.

Two weeks ago, Rwandan President Paul Kagame gave his historical take on the border that separates Rwanda from Congo, prompted by the resurgent M23 rebellion. “The borders that were drawn during colonial times had our countries divided,” he said.

“A big part of Rwanda was left outside, in eastern Congo, in southwestern Uganda and so forth and so forth. You have populations in these parts of other countries who have a Rwandese background. But they are not Rwandans, they are citizens of those countries that have absorbed those parts of Rwanda in the colonial times. So this is a fact. It is a fact of history…And these people have been denied their rights.”

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