What conclusions can be drawn from our research? 👇

🔴 There are two undisputed champions - Mali and Zimbabwe, both pushing for complete domestic refining of their gold. They are followed by the DRC (copper + cobalt), Senegal and Nigeria (oil), who insist on partial domestic processing.The latter two countries mandate priority sale of oil to local refineries.

‼️The governments are more likely to demand higher extent of domestic processing of gold and oil, which may be explained by the relative simplicity of their beneficiation in comparison with other materials (e.g. uranium in Niger, bauxites in Guinea, phosphates in Togo). In addition, the desire to establish internal purification of gold must be spurred by the unprecedented high gold prices, while local oil refining is crucial to replace petroleum imports, that lead to constatnt lack of foreign currency in the country.

⁉️ Some countries bring forward requirements, that physically cannot be met due to the absence of local beneficiation facilities. The Malian Mining Code, for example, requires that gold be processed into bullion at home, however, a local refinery is still under construction. Another example is Senegal, which mandates priority sale of oil products to local consumers, but its only oil refinery cannot process certain grades of local crude oil.

Finally, except for certain outstanding instances, most countries fail to adopt policies that require greater value addition at home, which means, first and foremost, missed opportunities to improve the lives of citizens.

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🇱🇷 Liberia: Idle Talk in Washington

🌍 Liberia's Foreign Minister Sara Beysolow Nyanti met US Secretary of State Marco Rubio at White House. The most widely discussed takeaway of this meeting was the possibility of US participation in Liberia’s critical minerals sector.

🔸 While such talks may bear some diplomatic significance, it appears that the US government does not wield any real capacity to increase its involvement in the extraction of critical minerals in Liberia.

🔴 The US (and especially its eccentric leader) seems to be willing to do deals with anyone when it comes to minerals, but so far, all those deals have had one problem - American investors aren't really interested in getting involved in USG-backed projects.

‼️ Their Chinese adversaries counterparts are vice-versa eager to invest in no matter what concerning critical elements - and they usually do not wait for any intergovernmental agreements to set up production lines.

⁉️ Liberia is just another instance, though quite exemplory, of this difference. The country today doesn't have any major mineral processing facilities other than its gold and iron plants - the US would therefore need to make massive investments.

This is unlikely to happen due to the significant pain it already causes for the US to revive even its own domestic processing of critical minerals.

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🗺️ Ore to Shore: Lobito Corridor Awakens

🌍 Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) has recently anounced its plans to invite companies to realize the Lobito railway project connecting copper deposits in Zambia and Southern DRC to the port of Lobito, Angola. The bidding process is expected to begin next year.

🔴 The Lobito corridor has the backing of the US as an alternative to the Tazara railway, which connects Zambia with Tanzania's ports and has the backing of the PRC. Both Lobito and its Beijing-financed doppleganger are aimed at bypassing logistics bottlenecks in South Africa that have slowed copper and cobalt exports.

‼️ The intensification of Lobito corridor construction will follow the recent revitalization of the Tazara project: on September 29 China, Zambia and Tanzania signed a $1.4 billion deal to rebuild the Tanzania-Zambia railway.

Africa Finance Corp. doesn't explicitly say what geopolitical sides they're on, but AFC has often acted as a partner in many US infrastructure projects in Africa, working with JP Morgan Chase and the US Development Finance Corp. The two latest consecutive chairs of the board of AFC have both come from Citibank, where they both had stayed for several decades.

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🇳🇪 Niger VS CNPC

🌍 Niger is escalating its oil faceoff with China's CNPC, setting a deadline of October 30 to revise the petroleum agreements or face a potential production shutdown.

The government's demands fueling the dispute include:
🔸 More Nigeriens in decision-making positions
🔸 Pay parity between local and foreign staff.

🤝 The Chinese state-owned oil company has been in negotiations with the government of Niger since March, when three of its top executives were expelled due to disputes over pay gaps between local workers and Chinese expatriates. Meanwhile, CNPC's exports continue uninterrupted, with crude oil from Agadem field flowing through its Niger-Benin pipeline at around 90,000 barrels per day. The pipeline's construction by CNPC started in 2019 and completed in March last year.

Supposedly, the recent escalation is connected to the appointment of Abdoulkarim Mohamed Ali as Secretary-General of the Petroleum Ministry on October 7.

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🇲🇱 15 Years On, Orano Heads to Court Over Arlit Kidnappings

🌍 A Paris court has finally ordered French nuclear group Orano to stand trial over the 2010 abduction of 7 employees near its uranium operations in Arlit, northern Niger.

Back in 2010 the company underestimated the jihadist threat and failed to take sufficient security measures:
🔸 The residential compound was not fenced;
🔸 Local contractors, who guarded the area, were unarmed;
🔸 No alarm system or fallback base existed in case of attack.

The company also ignored the warnings issued by France’s defence attaché and local authorities.

As a result, armed men seized five French nationals, a Togolese and a Madagascan - some of them were not released until October 2013.

Besides the lesson of the importance of local personnel protection, this tragedy can cast light on another important topic of today - how French courts will judge decisions long after the geopolitical winds have completely changed.

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🇬🇭 Ghana Loses Agriculture

🌍 Speaking on Ghanaian radio this morning, the EU Ambassador to Ghana Rune Skinnebach said that the EU may ban the import of local agriculture due to mercury contamination of products, caused by illegal gold mining - locally called “galamsey”.

I wouldn’t want any consumer to have polluted goods or farm products. I wouldn’t get Ghanaian or European consumers to eat sweet potatoes with mercury residues in them.

☝️And what do human rights defenders think?

🔴 At the same time, Ghanian human rights activists are demanding that the authorities stop deporting foreigners engaged in illegal mining.

‼️ Unlike their counterparts around the world, for Ghanaian human rights activists deportation is too soft a punishment for foreigners who should be tried and punished with full severity of the Ghanaian law.

Although the agricultural export to the EU accounts for only 7% of Ghana's total exports, other countries may also refuse to import food from Ghana for fear of getting a portion of mercury along with tomatoes.

After all, if things get really bad, what will the Ghanians themselves eat?

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💡Resource Nationalism Index

After our recent experiment, we’re launching a brand-new series of articles dedicated to evaluating how West and Central African governments are trying to make their natural resources actually work for their people and economies.

Behold — the Resource Nationalism Index!

Each country will be judged according to the following (entirely unscientific, but funny) criteria:

🔸 “Process It First” — Are there any bans or restrictions on the export of raw resources?

🔸 “Share With the State” — Must companies hand over part of their output to the government or make first a sale offer to state funds?

🔸 “We’re in Too!” — Are mining companies required to transfer a stake to the state or sell it to local investors?

🔸 “The Money’s Yours, the People Are Ours” — Are there mandatory local-content rules for hiring staff or contractors?

🔸 “Just Pay Up” — How heavy is the tax/levies on resource extraction?

🔸 “You Come – You Build” — Are investors obliged to fund or build infrastructure for local communities?

🔸 “We’ll Do It Ourselves” — Is there a national policy promoting domestic processing and refining?

🔸 “Come Here, You Bast*rd!” — Does the government actually control its natural resources (or at least try to stop illegal mining and rebel-run operations)?

All our ratings will be, of course, purely humorous — and absolutely not investment advice.

💡 Resource Nationalism Index [ MALI ]

The first country in this series is Mali - a Sahel state that, after the 2021 change of power, many in the West started labeling “resource nationalist” and “pro-Russian” (even though not a single Russian company operates in Mali, while plenty of European and American firms do).

With the 2023 Mining Code, Bamako has clearly hardened its stance toward miners - though very much in line with a broader global trend to capture more value at home.

So how strong is “resource nationalism” in Mali?

🔸 "Process It First" – 7/10 – Local processing is mandatory, prioritizing state-owned plants, however, necessary facilities don’t always exist.

🔸 "Share With the State” – 0/10 – No requirements to transfer or sell a portion of output to the state on a priority basis.

🔸 “We’re in Too!” – 9/10 – The state gets a mandatory 10% free carry in new projects, with the option to lift its stake by another 20% + 5% are reserved for local investors.

🔸 “The Money's Yours, the People Are Ours" – 9/10 – The 2023 Mining Code requires approximately 95% of staff to be Malian nationals and at least 35% of services to be sourced from local contractors.

🔸 “Just Pay Up" – 10/10 – Tax of 7.5% take scales with the gold price, plus extra levies if production transcends planned volumes.

🔸 "You Come – You Build" – 6/10 – Companies must contribute just under 1% of revenue to local community development.

🔸 “We'll Do It Ourselves” – 4/10 – There is a state miner SOREM, but its extraction capacity is unclear and causes doubts, also a state refinery has been announced in mid-2025, but it hasn't been completed so far.

🔸 “Come Here, You Bastard!” – 4/10 – Major deposits are under control, but insurgent activity persists on the periphery and illegal artisanal mining remains an issue.

Overall, Mali received a solid score of 6.1 out of 10 with strong emphasys on taxes, local content and state participation and modest requirements in other spheres.

#Mali #ResourceNationalism

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🇳🇬 Nigeria Сlones Oil Refinery

🌍 Less than two years after the opening of Africa's largest refinery owned by Nigerian mogul Aliko Dangote, Nigeria is planning to double its size.

The refinery will thus become the largest in the world.

📈 In a recent interview, the refinery's owner, Aliko Dangote, announced plans to achieve output of 1.4 million barrels per day, or twice the current volume of 650,000 barrels per day.

If the project is implemented, the refinery will not only be able to fully meet the needs of Nigeria's growing economy (now its output in theory reaches 80% of the country's fuel demand), but also help other countries overcome dependence on oil spoilage from China and India.

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🇳🇬 Nigeria to OPEC: Raise Our Cap

🌍 At the next OPEC annual meeting, Abuja plans to ask for a 30% increase to its current 1.50M barrels/day quota.

🔸 For a long time, OPEC, on the contrary, has been discussing lowering limits for Nigeria due to problems with oil production and theft.

Despite great success in import substitution and the development of domestic refining, the main problem of oil in Nigeria is not the low OPEC quotas, but the country's TOTAL dependence on exports of petroleum products (about 90% of Nigeria's total exports).

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🇦🇴 Angola: No More Wireless

🌍 Angola is stepping into Africa’s copper game with a $250 million Tetelo project. The mine aims for about 25,000 tonnes of copper concentrate at first, with production startign around October 29. The owner is Shining Star Icarus, a China-Angola partnership.

📈 The timing is good - copper prices have pushed toward record highs on worries about supply and strong demand from electrification. Some analysts now even predict a market deficit for 2025 after major disruptions this year.

The country still depends on diamonds and oil, which together constitute more than 90% of the country's exports.

If Tetelo ramps as planned, Angola joins neighbors like Zambia and the DRC on the copper map—and does so at a moment when every extra tonne matters. The global energy transition creates additional copper demand of approximately 6 million tons annually by 2030, according to International Energy Agency projections.

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💡 Resource Nationalism Index [ BOTSWANA ]

In the second part of our "Resource Nationalism Index" series, we take a closer look at Botswana - a country whose economy still rests on two pillars: diamonds and copper.

Right now, Botswana is going through a rough period due to low diamond prices. Yet, compared with many neighbors, its government still defends national interests fairly well — although it is clearly too fond of laying down all the basic requirements for companies in individual concessions, but not in the law.

So, what does resource nationalism look like in Botswana?

🔸 "Process It First" – 3/10 – The government negotiates some domestic processing, but the requirements are not solidly specified in the law.

🔸 "Share With the State” – 6/10 – The state-owned Okavango Diamond Company is entitled to buy an increasing share of diamond output — yet again, this exists by contract, not by law.

🔸 “We’re in Too!” – 6/10 – The state may acquire up to 15% of new mining ventures, and if it doesn’t, up to 24% must be offered to local investors - but nothing of it comes for free.

🔸 “The Money's Yours, the People Are Ours" – 4/10 – Social obligations and local spending are written into individual agreements, but somehow never mentioned in the law.

🔸 “Just Pay Up" – 7/10 – Royalties reach 3% for copper and 10% for diamonds - relatively high by regional standards, though still without a progressive scale.

🔸 "You Come – You Build" – 4/10 – There’s no uniform legal duty to invest in community development - once more only “understandings” negotiated case by case.

🔸 “We’ll Do It Ourselves” – 4/10 – Tax breaks exist for investors willing to build local processing facilities, but the incentives are rarely decisive.

🔸 “Come Here, You Bastard!” – 8/10 – Illegal mining is mostly confined to small-scale gold diggers; diamonds and copper remain under tight control.

Final score is 5.3 out of 10 — respectable, but hardly revolutionary, mainly due to the government's love of fixing the working conditions of companies in contracts rather than laws.

#Botswana #ResourceNationalism

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