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Africa Mining

Africa has ‘golden opportunity’ in battery commodities market – by Simone Lieditke (MiningWeekly.com – April 14,2023)

https://www.miningweekly.com/

The battery commodities market is experiencing a golden age of growth and development, spurred by rapid technological advances and the growing demand for batteries to support cleaner mobility and the roll-out of variable renewables generators.

Global battery demand is forecast to grow by some 1 615 GWh, or 384.5%, over the next eight years, according to statistics aggregator Statista. This anticipated upsurge in demand for lithium-ion and other batteries is largely attributed to the rise of electric vehicles (EVs), which are expected to progressively replace internal combustion engine passenger cars.

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55.22-carat ruby heads to auction with US$30-million estimate (Jewellery Business – April 12, 2023)

https://www.jewellerybusiness.com/

A record-breaking pigeon-red ruby is paced to fetch a pretty penny when it goes under the hammer at Sotheby’s Magnificent Jewels this June.

Dubbed “Estrela de Fura” (“Star of Fura” in Portuguese), the 55.22-carat cushion-cut gem is the largest ruby ever brought to auction. The stone, which was cut from a 101-carat rough recovered in Mozambique by Toronto-based mining group, Fura Gems, carries a pre-show estimate of $40.4 million (US$30 million).

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Column: Is it time to embrace Congo’s artisanal cobalt miners? – by Andy Home (Reuters – April 4, 2023)

https://www.reuters.com/

LONDON, April 4 (Reuters) – The problems around artisanal cobalt mining in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) will take “a coalition to solve”, according to Microsoft (MSFT.O). The $1.9 trillion U.S. tech giant was recently in the DRC to see what the other end of the consumer electronics supply chain looks like.

Microsoft chief of staff, tech and corporate responsibility Michele Burlington paid a visit in December to the Mutoshi artisanal mining site, where up to 15,000 miners, including children, are working in highly dangerous conditions.

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Zimbabwe to investigate gold-smuggling allegations – by Cecilia Jamasmie (Mining.com – April 4, 2023)

https://www.mining.com/

The government of Zimbabwe has broken the silence around allegations of gold smuggling and money laundering exposed in an Al-Jazeera documentary last month, saying on Tuesday that it will launch an inquiry into the claims.

In a four-part documentary released on March 23rd, the news network shows individuals allegedly affiliated with Zimbabwean government smuggling gold to evade western sanctions.

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Meet the gold miner intent on proving the Burkina bears wrong – by Peter Ker (Australian Financial Review – April 3,2023)

https://www.afr.com/

There is no need for an activist short seller to present the bear case for gold miners working in Burkina Faso. International news outlets such as BBC World provide a regular and thorough list of reasons why nervous investors might want to look elsewhere.

Burkina experienced two military coups last year and is now in a kind of civil war after its current leader, Ibrahim Traore, seized power with a promise to ramp up the fight against militant jihadist groups.

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Fight Over Corruption and Congo’s Mining Riches Takes a Turn in Washington – by Eric Lipton and Dionne Searcey (New York Times – April 2, 2023)

https://www.nytimes.com/

Dan Gertler, an Israeli billionaire, is pressing President Biden to remove sanctions that were imposed on him for bribe-fueled transactions in the impoverished African country.

WASHINGTON — Five years ago, the United States accused a wealthy Israeli diamond dealer of more than $1 billion worth of corrupt mining and oil deals in the Democratic Republic of Congo, saying they undermined economic growth and “the rule of law” in the impoverished African nation. Now, that businessman, Dan Gertler, has found a surprising ally in his quest to have his name removed from a U.S. sanctions list: President Felix Tshisekedi of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Despite the U.S. accusations that Mr. Gertler had in effect looted the country, Mr. Tshisekedi directly intervened with President Biden, asking that the Treasury Department roll back the punishment, documents obtained by The New York Times show.

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Copper ore analyses reveal deep connections between ancient African civilizations – by Staff (Mining.com – April 2, 2023)

https://www.mining.com/

An international team of researchers ran chemical and isotopic analyses of copper artifacts from southern Africa and discovered new cultural connections among people living in the region between the 5th and 20th centuries.

In a paper published in the journal Plos One, the researchers explain that people in the area between northern South Africa and the Copperbelt region in central Africa were more connected to one another than scholars previously thought.

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How China is winning the race for Africa’s lithium – by Harry Dempsey and Joseph Cotterill (Financial Times – April 2, 2023)

https://www.ft.com/

The country already dominates processing of the metal for use in electric vehicle batteries and is now investing heavily in mines, leaving western operators scrambling to keep up

The settlement of Uis in a remote part of Namibia seems an unlikely hotspot for a mineral cold war over the future of electric vehicles.

Uis lies in the arid hills of Erongo, a large and sparsely populated province of the south-west African country. For decades the only signs of its mineral wealth were the gemstones sold to tourists by artisanal miners, who scrabbled a living in the shadow of a disused tin mine.

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DRC says Rwandan mineral smuggling costs it almost $1bn a year – by Tom Wilson and Andres Schipani (Financial Times – March 21, 2023)

https://www.ft.com/

Kinshasa has long accused Kigali of plundering its resources by supporting insurgent M23 group

The Democratic Republic of Congo said it was losing almost $1bn a year in minerals that were being illegally smuggled into Rwanda, as it restated its call for international sanctions to be placed on the Kigali government.

Nicolas Kazadi, the DRC’s finance minister, said that Rwanda last year exported close to $1bn in gold, tin, tantalum and tungsten, even though the country has few mineral deposits of its own. “It’s all coming from DRC — that’s obvious,” he told the FT’s Commodities Global Summit in Lausanne. “It’s not only allegations, it’s evidence.”

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Glencore Set to Lose Crown as Top Cobalt Miner to China’s CMOC – by Mark Burton (Bloomberg News – March 21, 2023)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

(Bloomberg) — A Chinese miner is set to overtake Glencore Plc as the world’s top cobalt producer this year, as the rush for critical green-energy metals intensifies.

The challenger to Glencore’s dominant position is CMOC Group, which first became a major player in the cobalt market when it acquired the Tenke Fungurume mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2016. The company aims to double production this year, as it brings another massive Congolese mine online in the second quarter. That will propel it past Glencore, company filings show.

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Worry, mistrust meet plans to secure waste from Niger uranium mine (France24.com – March 15, 2023)

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

Arlit (Niger) (AFP) – Towering mounds dot the desert landscape in northern Niger’s Arlit region, but there is little natural about them — they are heaps of partially radioactive waste left from four decades of operations at one of the world’s biggest uranium mines.

An ambitious 10-year scheme costing $160 million is underway to secure the waste and avoid risks to health and the environment, but many local people are worried or sceptical. From 1978, France’s nuclear giant Areva, now called Orano, worked the area under a subsidiary, the Akouta Mining Company (Cominak).

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OPINION: The violence consuming eastern Congo shows the bloody cost of energy transition – by Blaise Ndala (Globe and Mail – March 11, 2023)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Blaise Ndala is the author of the new novel, In the Belly of the Congo. This essay was translated from the French by Pablo Strauss.

One day in August, 1908, not long before the colony known as the “Congo Free State” was ceded to Belgium, a young aide-de-camp of King Leopold II named Gustave Stinglhamber made his way toward the wing in the Palace of Laeken where a friend of his worked.

Nearly a quarter-century earlier, the Berlin Conference of 1884-85 had granted the Belgian monarch control, in a personal capacity, of a newly formed colony 80 times the size of Belgium. As the two friends approached a window, Stinglhamber sat down on a radiator – only to leap back up. It was boiling hot. A custodian was summoned to explain.

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Who wants to hear about White Saviourism gone wrong? – by Ben Radley (African Arguments.org – March 8, 2023)

https://africanarguments.org/

A new book on the Congo recycles stereotypes of Africa as a wasteland in need of saving in all its promo. It’s been rapturously received in the West.

Last month, award-winning author and academic Siddharth Kara published Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers our Lives. The book draws attention to labour conditions and living standards in areas of the Democratic Republic of the Congo that mine cobalt, a metal that will be critical in the hoped-for global energy transition.

Across 250 pages, it argues that by consuming products that contain Congolese cobalt, Western consumers are complicit in a human rights and environmental catastrophe.

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Higher commodity prices failing to spur fixed mining investment – by Martin Creamer (Mining Weekly – February 24, 2023)

https://www.miningweekly.com/

JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – The regulatory uncertainties and inability of the industry to transparently, quickly and efficiently apply for mining and prospecting rights in a corruption-free manner has had severe investment consequences, Minerals Council South Africa states in its Facts & Figures Pocketbook 2022.

This is glaringly evident in exploration, which, the Minerals Council adds, has virtually ground to a halt. In 2022, the mining sector spent a mere 9% of what it did during the commodity price peaks of 1990 and 2006 – and then overwhelmingly on brownfields exploration in existing licence areas and minutely in new unexplored greenfields areas.

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Glencore Must Pay Almost $30 Million to Bribery Victim Crusader Health – by Chris Dolmetsch (Bloomberg News – February 27, 2023)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

(Bloomberg) — Glencore Plc was told to pay almost $30 million in restitution to the founders of a company that provided healthcare related services in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and was forced to shut down as a result of the commodities giant’s global bribery scheme.

US District Judge Lorna G. Schofield in New York on Monday ordered Glencore to pay $29.6 million to the company, Crusader Health, for bribing a public official in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in exchange for dismissing a lawsuit brought by Crusader against a Glencore subsidiary. Crusader had sought more than $50 million.

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