⚠️ Where Can Resource Nationalism Lead?
[ #PolicyReview ]

The answer: to success. For details let's look at the example of Indonesia.

⏩ Indonesia did something many resource countries only talk about: it made mining companies stop shipping the rock and start building plants.

🔸 In the late 2000s Indonesia was a big supplier of raw nickel ore to Asia, mostly to China. There were only a couple of smelters in the country and most income left with the ships.

🔸 By 2024 it was supplying more than half of global primary nickel, exports of processed nickel reached tens o f billions of dollars, and whole industrial parks grew next to the mines.

⏩ This change did not come from a single decree. Indonesia adopted policies that created places to invest, tax holidays, power supply and a clear sign that the government would not reverse the core idea.

So, what exactly did Indonesia do?

🔸 2009 – the key mining law (Law No. 4/2009) appeared. It said minerals had to be processed inside the country and it prepared the ground for export restrictions. It also pushed for more Indonesian participation in mining projects.

🔸 2013 – Indonesia and China agreed to develop the Indonesia Morowali Industrial Park (IMIP) in Sulawesi, close to nickel deposits. This gave investors a real place with a port, power, land and one large anchor company (Tsingshan). From that moment investors knew processing could be done right at the source.

🔸 January 2014 – the export ban on unprocessed minerals, including nickel ore, was enforced. Companies that wanted to keep selling had to start building smelters. Processed nickel exports later jumped from about USD 6 billion in 2013 to around USD 30 billion in 2022.

🔸 2010s – 2020s – inside the new industrial parks (IMIP, later Weda Bay) the state added fiscal and non-fiscal support: tax holidays up to 20 years, exemptions on imported equipment, simpler permits, special labour rules.

🔸 2019 and after – the government fixed the next goal: electric vehicles and battery materials, with a presidential regulation in 2019 and follow-up plans. So the story did not stop at smelting, it moved to higher-value uses of nickel.

In about a decade, Indonesia turned a complaint (“we export too much raw ore”) into a system that forces value to stay at home - eventually into an example to follow.

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🇸🇳 Senegal Steps on the Gas

When, around 1785, the British first used natural gas to light houses and streets, nobody imagined how it would shape industry, agriculture and daily life. Today, Senegal is set to learn these benefits in full too.

🌐 Senegal announced plans to build a national gas pipeline network by 2027, aiming to bring its offshore gas to power plants, factories and cities. The state firm Réseau Gazier du Sénégal (RGS) is building about 400 km of lines in five segments, budgeted at roughly $1.15 billion.

⏩ So far, most of Senegal’s new oil and gas has gone abroad.

🔸 The new pipes aim to connect Senegal’s recent offshore finds to the economy. In 2015-2017 it discovered Grand Tortue Ahmeyim (GTA) and Yakaar-Teranga deposits, however, without the upcoming pipeline, “in-country” gas movement has been very limited, mostly destined for Senegal's floating powerplant operated by Turkish Karpowership company, which supplies some 20% of the country's electricity.

🔸 With this pipeline built, power stations will be able to switch to domestic gas, and new uses will emerge in fertilizers, ceramics and glass.

Pipes to the people are the real milestone. The goal is not just exports but affordable gas for homes, farms and factories - however, if all the molecules end up with one or two foreign firms - that won't do.

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🇬🇭 Ghana: British Colonialism Recompensed?

At the height of the British rule of Ghana, London extracted about 25 tonnes of gold a year, which afterwards ended up in the Bank of England and helped to back the pound. Meanwhile, stolen cultural heritage helped to fill the British museums.

🌐 The United Kingdom and Switzerland have "returned" to Ghana more than 130 artifacts of the Ashanti Kingdom's heritage, exported during its conquest by British colonial troops at the end of the 19th century.

🔸 The artifacts incude royal regalia made of gold and bronze, drums and gold scales from the time of the Ashanti kingdom.

⏩ However, the UK only condescended to transfer the exhibits to the Ghana Museum for no more than three years on the pretext of legal restrictions in the UK.

🔸 Much less would London be willing to return approximately 620 tonnes of gold that it had took out of Ghana, then the Gold Cost, during the colonial rule.

🔸 Ghana has made a great stride since then - now it would only take some 5-6 years for the country to produce the same amount.

However, even though Ghana now hardly needs British benevolence in terms of economic compensation, the expropriated cultural wealth cannot be digged out of the ground as simply.

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🇳🇬 With ministers like that, who needs colonialists?

🌐 In another unnecessary validation of the famous proverb that a fish rots from the head down, Nigeria has issued an arrest warrant for former Minister of State for Petroleum Resources Timipre Sylva. He is suspected of conspiracy and criminal conversion of $14.9 million.

🔸 The funds are linked to a planned 2,000-barrels-per-day modular refinery in Brass, Bayelsa State. In 2020, the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board committed $35 million to the project.

🔸 The former minister himself must have felt at home in this affair - that is, he was born and matured in the very place where the plant was supposed to be located. From 2008 to 2012, he even served as governor of Bayelsa State, which means that his in-state connections will probably be on the list of those scrutinized as a part the alledged conspiracy.

⏩ Sylva's public aid denied the accusations and pointed at political considerations behind the issued warrant.

🔸 The warrant may be linked to the recent rearrangement of Nigeria's military elite amid the context of an alleged coup attempt.

However, what is known for sure is that public funds for refineries vanished with no plant built. The problem is bigger than a single name - Nigeria's recent audit of its oil sector revealed up to $300 billion worth of oil theft. A full reshuffle of Nigeria’s most rent-generating sector is long overdue - and increasingly likely.

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🇿🇼 Pipeline of Legitimacy

🌐 Lobbying the expansion of the sales market for his oil empire, Africa’s richest man Aliko Dangote has just pledged up to $1 billion investments in Zimbabwe.

🔸 The planned investments include a 2,200 km petroleum pipeline from Namibia’s Walvis Bay through Botswana into Zimbabwe.

🔸 At the other end of the projected pipeline in Namibia's Walvis Bay Dangote’s group aims to construct a 1.6 million-barrel fuel storage facility, that will serve as an entry point for fuel from Africa’s largest oil refinery, also owned and run by Dangote.

⏩ At the same moment Zimbabwe’s ruling party moves to keep incumbent president Mnangagwa in office until 2030.

🔸 Amidst popular discontent over the suggested extension of the presidential mandate, Dangote did not skimp on compliments to the president, saying:

There’s been quite a lot of change between when we came and now. The government is solid, when you look at what his excellency has done in turning the economy around.

The bargain here is clear. However, while profit remain Dangote’s main objective, he also tends to build things that also work for people, which is a rare record among the very rich.

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🇬🇳 Iron Fist In Bottleneck

The project that was supposed to bring about more railways is facing stifling infrastructure

🌐 After the launch of the Simandou complex in Guinea, the country’s main port of Conakry got almost paralysed because of the jump of traffic.

🔸 The crisis was caused by large-scale supplies of equipment for the Chinese-Guinean consortium developing the Simandou deposit, one of the world’s largest sources of iron ore.

🔸 The Turkish company Albayrak Group, which manages the port, could not cope with a 70% surge in cargo traffic, while the government’s only solution was to threaten the operator with the termination of the contract.

⏩ It is not the only international-scale problem that has been caused by the Simandou project

🔸 In September Guinean authorities turned away a shipment of 18 China-built locomotives, claiming that, by contract, locomotives must come from the United States.

One of the initial promises of the project was an infrastructure extension: the developers were supposed to build a new port and a 650-km railway - for both private and public use. However, now it seems that Simandou alone is going to flood the infrastructure system.

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🇳🇬 Nobody Asked the Nigerians Once Again

Oil and gasoline are one of the most lucrative sectors of Nigeria's economy - and one of the most toxic in terms of elite wrestling

🌐 Abuja decided against the imposition of a new 15% tax on fuel imports after fierce criticizm on the part of fuel traders and opposition media. Behind the curtain its powers that be still fight over fuel money.

🔸 The Nigerian downstream regulator announced that the 15% ad-valorem duty approved in October will not go ahead. The plan first surfaced in a leaked memo and was slated to start in December. Officials publicly portrayed the reversal as a move to steady supply and avoid holiday price spikes.

⏩ However, the episode became a proxy contest, with Africa's richest man Aliko Dangote as the main would-be beneficiary of the tax on one side - and fuel traders and hidden stakeholders on the other.

🔸 Among the loudest critics of the tax was Sahara Reporters, owned by opposition activist Omoyele Sowore, which was one of the first to disseminate the leakage and further spurred public anxiety by reiterating that the levy would raise landing costs and punish consumers.

🔸 While the tariff, if effected, would openly benefit Aliko Dangote's oil empire, its main critics in Sahara Reporters are also suspected of dubious affiliation, including links to the US funds and secret services.

This is another round in a long fight within the elite over who controls fuel rents. If the choice is between two evils, the better path is not to choose, or at the very least go for your own evil instead of a US-backed one.

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🇨🇩 Democratic Republic of Cobalt
It's not easy to fight crime when you're involved.

🌐 As the DRC tries to curb illegal cobalt mining, the Congolese state owned Entreprise Générale du Cobalt reported its first 1000 tonnes of production from artisanal mines. Six years ago Kinshasa handed the company a monopoly on buying artisanal cobalt.

🔸 Officials present it as a turning point in the effort to clean up the sector. The company promises safer pits, eradication of child labour, environmental sustainability.

⏩ The 6-year result may sound solid until placed next to the real levels of artisanal cobalt that left Congo over the same period. In 2024 alone, artisanal miners in the DRC dug and sold up to 5,000 tonnes.

🔸 A further extension of the EGC’s oversight over the artisanal sector is much needed. However, it would inevitably collide with the interests of the Congolese elites.

🔸 Recent investigations have questioned the integrity of President Félix Tshisekedi’s relatives, linking certain members of the family to so called “cobalt looting cartels” operating on copper and cobalt concessions in the Lualaba region.

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🇳🇬 Africa's Most Ambitious Oil Bribe
[ Budget Hole ]

When a person buys something at the price of X and sells it at the price of X2, this is called a business. It can be X3, even X4. X10 already starts to seem suspicious, especially if the buyer is the government. However, what about X500?

🌟 OPL 245 is a deep-water oil block in the Niger Delta. Estimates say it holds about 9 billion barrels of crude, close to a quarter of Nigeria’s proven reserves. In 1998-2011 it became an object of one of Africa's most ambitious bribery schemes.

It started in 1998, during the military era of General Sani Abacha, when the OPL 245 was acquiered by a company called Malabu Oil & Gas, owned by the then oil minister Dan Etete, for a miserable $20 million, of which he only paid around $2M.

A new government revoked Malabu’s OPL 245 licence in 2001 and reassigned the block to Shell, which triggered years of legal battles between Malabu, Shell (and later Eni) and the Nigerian state.

In 2011 Nigeria's new President Goodluck Jonathan pushed for a final solution. Malabu agreed to give up OPL 245 to the government for $1.092 billion. Shell and Eni in turn agreed to pay to the government the same $1.092 billion for the block, plus a $210 million bonus.

➡️The deal may seem unfair, as Dan Etete got the block almost for free and then sold it back to the state for $1.1B. In fact, it was even worse.

When Shell and Eni sent their money to the Nigerian government's account in JP Morgan, some obscure manipulations on the part of the then office holders took place - and the bank was instructed to transfer around $875 million to accounts controlled by Malabu.

➡️ Malabu did tried to return the money back to the officials - but not in the way it should have.

Once the money reached Malabu, Dan Etete began to cash it out - all in order to remunerate the country's top leadership for their support via his middleman entrepreneur Aliyu Abubakar. The money could have been intended for the then President Jonathan, the country's Attorney General, the Minister of Petroleum and the National Security Adviser.

The bribe case around OPL 245 has been brought before Italian, English and Nigerian courts. A criminal trial in Milan ended in 2021 with the acquittal of Shell, Eni and all managers. In London the High Court dismissed Nigeria’s claim against JPMorgan. In Abuja a court in 2024 discharged former Attorney General Mohammed Adoke and others having found the evidence not strong enough.

Across all of these cases, no senior official in Nigeria and no executive in the companies has received a final prison sentence for OPL 245. The oilfield still has no production.

#BudgetHole

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🇹🇩 Chad: Competition Without Competitors

🌐 The Chinese are boasting of a whole new oil frontier that has opened up for them in Chad, with oil fields to expand, refineries to build and very few rivals left.

🔸 Chad has announced plans to double output from about 150,000 barrels a day and is leaning on China and the UAE to revive its oil industry, with Chinese CNPC planning to expand existing operations and build the country's second refinery, in addition to the existing Djermaya plant near N’Djamena.

⏩ Over the past fifteen years Chad has been scaring off its Western partners by endless reviews of taxes, contracts and control. From a consortium of Exxon, Chevron and Petronas, that used to make up the axis of Chad's oil industry in the 2010s, only Britain’s Savannah Energy remained by 2023, when its assets were nationalized.

🔸In contrast, Chinese actors have been willing to stay in this environment. CNPC built a refinery and pipelines with Chinese state bank loans, while CEFC China Energy even allegedly arranged a $2 million bribe for the then President Idriss Déby in return for oil rights.

🔸 In contrast to some of its neighbours, Chad has been utilizing "resource nationalism"-like considerations as an instrument for elites enrichment.

As a result, it now risks becoming dependent exclusively on the very partner whose record in the country and across the continent includes serious pollution cases, conflicts with local employees and numerous bribery scandals.

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🇳🇪 Niger's New Uranium Posture

Paris apparently hears better from the sands of Arlit than from Niamey

🌐 In response to the recent complaints from the French media about the sale of 1,000 tons of uranium by Niger to Russia, Abdourahamane Tiani outlined to Paris and the world Niger's new approach to its uranium wealth.

🔸 During a visit to the Agadez region, Niger’s president Abdourahamane Tiani visited the SOMAÏR uranium site near Arlit, four months after the company was nationalized from the French company Orano.

⏩ Although without open reference to the cries of the Western media, the president's words contained an outline of the country's reviewed approach to nuclear fuel production and cooperation with the French:

🔸 Niger considers the nationalization of the SOMAÏR site irreversible;

🔸 The state is going to ensure the continuation of normal work at the site (which would cost some $88.6 million);

🔸 Niger is going to commercialize its yellowcake production.

🔸 The latter unequivocally means that Niger from now reasserts its right to choose partners in its uranium industry, regardless of what Paris and Orano may thinks.

For decades, French companies drew fuel for European reactors from Arlit while Niger's soil accumulated radioactive waste. The French presence had not translated into any domestic nuclear industry built on its own ore.

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