Tag Archives: Africa mining

The Real Price for ‘Green’ Energy

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Civilization would not exist were it not for miners. Every year the world’s oldest industry supplies hundreds of megatons of the primary metals and minerals that are essential to all subsequent industries—from medical devices to kitchen appliances, aircraft, toys, power plants, computers and cars. Hence it’s consequential when the governments of Europe and the U.S. implement policies requiring that global mining expand, and soon, by 400% to 7,000%. Those policies are meant to force a transition away from the oil, natural gas and coal that supply 80% of global energy. But it’s an unavoidable fact that building the favored transition machines—wind turbines, solar panels, electric cars—will require astonishing quantities of minerals to produce the same amount of energy.

The other challenge involves people. Mining has always been as much about people as it has about geology, technology and money. In “The War Below: Lithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives,” Ernest Scheyder highlights the myriad difficulties faced by the people who build mines, as well as those hurt by or opposed to them. As Mr. Scheyder notes, mining is “dirty work.” That’s no invective; it’s just reality…He focuses on the social and political dynamics that accompany big mining projects because, as he writes, there’s “no way around the fact that mines are gargantuan creations that maim the Earth’s surface.” He makes clear that his goal isn’t to question the need for more mines but to understand “whether these lands should be dug up in an attempt to defuse climate change,” especially when some lands are considered sacred by their neighbors and inhabitants.

Excerpts, ‘Mark P. Mills, The War Below’ Review: Digging for Minerals, WSJ, Mar. 3, 2024

Miners against Miners: the Underground Battles

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In South Africa, dissatisfied miners are taking their co-workers hostage and confining them in deep underground shafts to force concessions from corporate bosses. Mining companies and workers say the violent strikes emerged as part of a turf war between the country’s two biggest mining unions, whose competition for fee-paying members has heated up just months before national elections. At some mines, they were also employed to demand higher wages and other changes to compensation. The wildcat strikes began in October 2023 at Gold One, which has experienced two such underground protests, and have since spread to several other mines, including 

The disputes add to the physical risks of some of the world’s most dangerous jobs and further imperil South Africa’s embattled mining sector, where hundreds of thousands of workers still toil underground in some of the oldest and deepest shafts on earth. South Africa is the world’s largest producer of platinum and a major gold producer. The average salary of an underground employee at Modder East gold mine is 10,500 South African rand, equivalent to around $550, a month, according to Gold One. Miners typically work eight-hour shifts, six days a week.

At one such underground protest, the kidnappers sent a note to the mine’s managers at the surface that said they would start killing hostages [their co-workers] if no food was sent down. One miner was hospitalized with severe lacerations after being whipped on the lower half of his body…

Excerpts from Alexandra Wexler, Kidnapped by Co-Workers: South African Labor Disputes Take a Violent Turn, Feb. 14, 2024

Mining in Africa: who gets the money?

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Most west African governments have signed—or pledged to sign—the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI). The EITI tries to ensure that contracts and accounts of taxes and revenue generated by concessions are open to public scrutiny. But that is easier said than done. Last year Liberia’s government asked a British accounting firm, Moore Stephens, to carry out an audit of Liberian mining contracts signed between the middle of 2009 and the end of 2011. The audit, published in May 2013, found that 62 of the 68 concessions ratified by Liberia’s parliament had not complied with laws and regulations. The government has yet to take action after a string of recommendations emerged from an EITI retreat in July 2013.

Regional governments also fret over a practice known as “concession flipping”, whereby foreign mining companies that do not have the capacity to exploit sites sell their concessions to larger companies for windfall profits. “Every flip is essentially a heist on the government exchequer, with anonymous offshore firms as the getaway car,” says Leigh Baldwin of Global Witness, a London-based lobby that fights for fairer deals for local people and their governments from mining and other resources. Concession flipping, he adds, is widespread in Africa. The Africa Progress Panel, headed by Kofi Annan, a Ghanaian who once led the UN, has put out a report called “Equity in Extractives”. This, too, stresses a need for more openness in mining contracts. As people in the region demand more democracy, better deals from mining are a new priority.

Mining in west Africa: Where’s our cut?, Economist, Dec. 7, 2013, at 51