🇳🇪 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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🇹🇷 Ottoman Empire Comes Back
Turkey's plans and projects for Africa's mineral wealth

Recently, a short remark by Turkey’s energy minister about completing the first phase of a gold project in Mali received media coverage so extensive, that it has become an icon reflecting how many still overlook Turkey's quiet encroachment upon Africa’s resource sector. That silence hides a much bigger story ready to unfold.

🔸 Today the list of Turkish projects that already produce something on African soil is still short, and includes only 3 countries where production lines are in place and in action - in Niger and Sudan Turkey's state-run company MTA digs gold, in Nigeria Ankara gets crushed stone.

⏩ The real weight of Turkish ambitions is seen the multitude of projects that are to come in the near future, linking Ankara to a wide arc of African states.

🔸 Turkish state and private actors are lining up a wave of new plays:

🔸 In Somalia, Turkish TPAO already runs offshore eploration, with the eye on oil and gas in Somali waters.
🔸 In Libya, the same company is also conducting a large offshore mapping project that could lead to Turkish drills in the central Mediterranean.
🔸 In Namibia ALP24 promotes oil and gas storage and exploration plans.
🔸 The same ALP24 seeks coal and diamond projects in Botswana, and copper and cobalt ventures in Zambia.
🔸 In Ethiopia, the Calik group has agreements to study gas development in the Ogaden basin and new gold projects.

🔸Alongside the resource deals Turkey promotes defence exports, training missions and energy services. On top of Ankara's military presence in Somalia come defense cooperation with Chad, energy projects in Senegal and Gambia.

Taken together, this is a slow and deliberate economic advance into Africa. Turkey is entering the continent quietly, step by step, and African resources are only one part of a wider strategic footprint that will be hard to ignore in a few years.

#InterestsAndAssets

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🇪🇹 From Cans to Spacecrafts
In cooperation with Russia Ethiopia may unlock a batch of brand new industrial sectors

🌐 Ethiopia has signed a $1 billion deal with a Russian company Rusal to build a massive aluminium plant that would finally bring to life local metal production.

🔸 The plans outline capacity of 500,000 tonnes a year, with the first phase estimated at about $1 billion and a construction period of 3-4 years.

⏩ Having pushed Moscow out of its usual markets, Western countries turned Russian industrial groups into builders of processing capacity in new places, where the demand for metals is growing faster, including East Africa.

🔸 Until now Ethiopia had no large aluminium smelter. Local initiatives focused on much smaller projects, meant mainly to replace imported metal in construction.

🔸 A 500,000 tonne plant would move Ethiopia into the league of established African aluminium producers like Ghana Mozambique.

For Ethiopia this turns Moscow into a partner that is ready to bring industry in addition to simple trade. Russian companies that accept the risk are trying to posiyion themselves as reliable partners for those who aim to process more of resources at home.

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💡 Resource Nationalism Index [ GUINEA ]

With the start of the Simandou iron mega-complex, Guinea is going to transcend its usual span of bauxite and gold exports. However, any diversification also means a new challenge and an endurance test for Guinea's resource policies.

Is the country prepared enough to embrace its strengthened clout in iron production? Let's figure out in our "Resource Nationalism Index" series.

The policies of Guinea in relation to its natural wealth are:

🔸 "Process It First" – 6/10 – Export of unprocessed ore is not formally banned, but Guinea's Mining Code requires companies to develop processing capacity for the minerals they extract. All bauxite producers must begin building alumina refineries in Guinea no later than 2027.

🔸 "Share With the State” – 0/10 – The state does not take a physical share of production + there are no mandatory domestic supply quotas

🔸 “We’re in Too!” – 7/10 – The state has the right to get 15% free-carried interest + an option to purchase up to an additional 20%, bringing potential total state ownership up to 35% - without any additional share reserved for local investors.

🔸 “The Money's Yours, the People Are Ours" – 6/10 – in each company the Deputy General Manager must be Guinean, and within 5 years from the start of operations the General Manager must also be Guinean. As of subsidiaries, at least 30% of all goods and services must be procured from Guinean companies.

🔸 “Just Pay Up" – 3/10 – Royalty on gold - 5% of production value, while royalty on bauxite is extremely low - around 0.075%.

🔸 "You Come – You Build" – 7/10 – Annual contributions are based on turnover: 0.5% for bauxite and iron ore, 1% for gold and other minerals.

🔸 “We’ll Do It Ourselves” – 6/10 – The government engages in investments via state-run SOGUIPAMI company, while maintaining some tax breaks and incentives to encourage local processing.

🔸 “Come Here, You Bast*rd!” – 5/10 – In 2016 artisanal gold output has been estimated at around $300 million, while artisanal diamond mining (“diamond triangle” - Kerouané, Kérouané, Beyla, Macenta) largely operates outside formal licensing.

Between extreme resource nationalism and wild capitalism, Guinea prefers to choose neither - remaining in the middle on the most parameters. The only aspect that negatively diverges from this tendency is the lack of requirements to transfer a fair part of production to the state or put it in the local market.

#ResourceNationalism

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🇳🇬 US Pours Oil On Nigeria's Troubled Water

In between accusations of genocide, the Americans sell record volumes of oil to Nigeria

🌐 Crude shipments from the United States to Nigeria in the first 8 months of 2025 more than doubled compared with a year earlier.

🔸 Even though it remains a major producer itself, between February and August Nigeria imported 31.69 million barrels, compared to 15.79 million barrels in the same period of 2024.

⏩ For a country which itself produces around 1.7 million barrels of crude each day, rising crude imports show that the process of local processing build-up is not linear.

🔸 Nigeria still suffers from disruptions of local upstream supply chains. In late September 2025 Nigeria's flagship Dangote Refinery partly stopped selling petrol due to crude supply constraints on the part of the state-run NNPC oil corporation. On the top of this, recenlty Nigeria's Senate ad hoc committee has reported a disappearance of about $300 billion in crude proceeds since 2015.

🔸 Another source of supply shortage is oil exports, which remain more profitable for traders and producers than selling on the domestic market due to trading in dollars rather than in naira.

Currently Nigeria is moving through a difficult transition in which it needs to navigate and somehow reconcile elite interests, market mechanisms and the goals of national development.

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🌐 Weekly News Digest on West & Central Africa’s Mineral Industries [ November 11 – November 17 ]

This was a week of investment announcements and artisanal mining.

💡Here are the key highlights:

🇨🇩 DR Congo
- State-owned Entreprise Générale du Cobalt reported its first 1000 tonnes of production from artisanal mines

- Around 40 people died in a mine accident

🇬🇭Ghana
- Villages in Ghana started to field their own patrols against poisonous illegal gold mining.

- The United Kingdom and Switzerland have "returned" to Ghana more than 130 artifacts of the Ashanti Kingdom's heritage

🇬🇳 Guinea
- Guinea’s main port of Conakry got almost paralysed because of the jump of traffic after the launch of Simandou complex

🇲🇱 Ethiopia
- In northern Ethiopia, a war-torn province of Tigray has turned into a multi-billion dollar illegal gold field

- Ethiopia has signed a $1 billion deal with a Russian company Rusal

🇳🇪 Niger
- Abdourahamane Tiani outlined Niger's new approach to its uranium wealth

🇳🇬 Nigeria
- Nigeria waits for investors to relaunch its 4 dying state-owned refineries

- Nigeria issued an arrest warrant for former Minister of State for Petroleum Resources

- Abuja decided against the imposition of a new 15% tax on fuel imports

- Crude shipments from the United States to Nigeria in the first 8 months of 2025 more than doubled compared with a year earlier.

🇸🇳 Senegal
- Senegal announced plans to build a national gas pipeline network by 2027

🇿🇼 Zimbabwe
- Aliko Dangote has just pledged up to $1 billion investments in Zimbabwe.

#NewsDigest

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Keeping Partners at Pipe's Length
[ Minerals In Numbers ]

How many oil and gas pipelines are there in Africa? ... and where do they lead?

⏩ The response is 16,000 kilometres - that is the approximate total length of all cross border oil and gas pipelines that start or end in Africa.

They include oil lines like Niger–Benin, Chad–Cameroon, Tazama and gas lines such as the West African Gas Pipeline, the Mozambique–South Africa line. A length sufficient to twice circle Pluto, or to two-way pipeline connection between South Africa and Tunisia, indefinitely moving oil back and forth.

Very cool, well done, we've build so much infrastructure - now what?

⏩ The interesting part starts when we look at where the pipes lead. Roughly half of those 16,000 kilometres move natural gas, much of it from Algeria and Libya under the Mediterranean to Europe. The rest are oil and product lines that connect a few coastal hubs to inland suppliers like Niger or South Sudan.

🔸 Most countries that produce oil and gas still lack infrastructure to ensure accessible domestic supply - that is, in many countries, both inland and coastal, there is no national gas and oil supply grids.

The pipeline maps are not just for infrastructure lovers. They define the way economies grow. When there is a pipe shipping gas to Europe and no pipes sending it to the nearest factory - guess where the industry will thrive?

#MineralsInNumbers

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🇦🇪 Foreign Oil Specialists in Uganda

🌐 Uganda is now going to bring in investors from the UAE to build its $4 billion oil refinery.

🔸 New agreements with Dubai based Alpha MBM Investments move the long delayed 60,000 barrel per day refinery in Hoima a bit closer to a final go ahead set for 2026.

⏩ Uganda uses the same Emirati connection that buys almost all of its exported gold, whereof a large part allegedly comes illegally from the DRC.

🔸 In contrast to gold, oil production in Uganda remains mostly rudimentary. French TotalEnergies and Chinese CNOOC are only planning to kick off country’s first significant production in 2026.

In addition to the mass purchase of illegal gold, the UAE is eager to offer African countries investments in their primary profession - oil production.

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🇳🇬 New Pipes, Old Habits

Nigeria sits on more than 200 trillion cubic feet of gas, its government promotes a Decade of Gas. However, electric grid and factories still struggle for fuel, while gas volumes now line up for export.

🌐 Nigeria and Equatorial Guinea have signed a deal to fast track a cross border pipeline that will send Nigerian gas to Equatorial Guinea. The gas will go to the Punta Europa plant on Bioko Island, where it will be processed into liquefied gas.

🔸 The Ajaokuta Steel Complex, the Aluminium Smelter Company, Olorunsogo and Omotosho power plants - this is far from complete list of Nigeria's plants and factories that have not started working at all or are not operating at full capacity due to problems with gas supplies.

🔸 The country still suffers from limited pipeline infrastructure, weak processing capacity and security problems along pipelines, which all make it hard to bring gas to local users - however, this does not prevents Abuja from exporting the so much needed fuel abroad.

With the new deal, Nigeria risks falling into the same trap as with oil that was exported, refined abroad and brought back at an inflated dollar price. The pipeline to Equatorial Guinea may earn revenue, yet it also shows that unfinished work on domestic gas keeps Nigeria locked into an export and import loop that serves foreign markets more than national industrial growth.

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At The Core of Africa's Corruption
[ Budget Hole ]

Western companies speak about responsible business, transparency and environmental protection so often, that one could think their fuel does not emit CO2, and John could baptize Jesus with water from tailings of their plants.

🌟 However, behind the curtain the same companies can as easily move bags of cash on private jets to win oil deals. One such instance is Glencore whose staff paid more than 100 million dollars in bribes to officials in Africa and Latin America.

Glencore is a Swiss-based giant that trades oil, fuel and metals. From about 2007 to 2018, its agents issued fake invoices and withdrew so much cash from ATMs that it would suffice to cover the budget of a couple of small towns - all in order to establish "contacts" with local officials in Nigeria, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Equatorial Guinea, the Democratic Republic of Congo.

For instance, in DRC Glencore used an Israeli businessman Dan Gertler to negotiate mining deals on non-market terms. In 2008 Gertler, around $10 million in hand, negotiated with Joseph Kabila's government to help Glencore get cheaper prices for Katanga Mining. He also bought shares from a state-owned company in Mutanda and Kansuki mines at far below their market value in 2011.

Of course, time passes and all this could not have gone unnoticed. In 2022 in the wake of lawsuits filed in 2018 in the US and UK, Glencore agreed to pay more than 1.5 billion dollars in penalties, mostly to the US - a little over 1 billion dollars.

➡️ So, has corruption been defeated - or is it not? How is it that they paid a $1 billion fine in the United States, while the US has not suffered any losses because of Glencore's actions?

Here is a catch - DRC and other victims of Glencore's gambles were only paid $230 million. The company kept all its main mines and trading rights in these countries. For comparison, in DRC in 2023 Glencore produced copper and cobalt worth of more than $3 billion.

A perfect example how the lebel of accountability and responsibility works - the damage was caused to African countries and to its people, while fines were paid in Washington, with only a miserable share left for victims as a way to ensure the ongoing presence of Glencore in these countries.

#BudgetHole

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Dancing On Graves in Mozambique

🌟 A civil NGO says it isn’t going to allow French oil and gas major TotalEnergies to hush up war crimes in Mozambique.

➡️ The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights has filed a complaint with French prosecutors accusing TotalEnergies of complicity in war crimes, torture and enforced disappearance linked to its Mozambique LNG project in Cabo Delgado.

➡️ Since 2024 TotalEnergies has been suspected of complicity in the so-called "container massacre", where the soldiers of the Joint Task Force, a unit of Mozambican army working almost as a PMC for TotalEnergies, allegedly detained, tortured and killed civilians near the Afungi gas site between July and September 2021.

➡️ This filing comes as TotalEnergies just announced the lifting of the force majeure declared in April 2021, planning to restart pumping gas by 2029.

If the complaint in Paris holds, it will be a complete disgrace for Mozambique: a court on the other side of the world can protect ordinary people better than their own government, which is pumping gas out from under their feet.

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🇨🇩 DRC: Prohibition to Break the Law

🌐 The DRC has officially extended its ban on selling minerals from territories it does not control.

🔸 The order of the Ministry of Mining, published on Sunday, November 16, states the extension of the ban on the extraction and export of minerals (mainly coltan, cassiterite and wolframite) from about 40 artel deposits in Masisi territory in North Kivu and Kalehe territory in South Kivu.

🔸 Both provinces are partially controlled by the AFC/M23 group at the moment, but, more importantly, local artisanal miners, even outside the territories controlled by the insurgents, most likely sell their products at points in Goma and Bukavu, where AFC/M23 will already take its share of profits.

⏩ It is clear that despite all the prohibitions, these minerals will eventually end up in Rwanda, where they will be proudly labeled and shipped to factories in Europe and the United States. Rwanda has long ceased to be ashamed of its outstanding success in the mining industry and proudly demonstrates a significant excess of coltan exports over local production levels (see above).

Has anything changed with the signing of this piece of paper? No, nothing - it's just that now the DRC will be able to continue to legally demand from European officials who have the same tantalum in their phones, extracted by the the Congolese in the East, a more responsible purchase of minerals from Rwanda.

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🇹🇩 Chinese Matchmaker
Chinese interests as a common ground for Niger and Chad

🌐 The Minister of Petroleum of Chad, Ndolonogie Naimbaye Alixe, has just concluded a very fruitful visit to Niger, during which representatives of Chad’s oil regulator ARSAT, the Nigerian public oil company SONIDEP and banking institution BSIC Tchad signed an agreement on the supply of fuel from Niger to Chad.

🔸 Although Chad exports crude oil, Chadians themselves suffer from fuel shortages. According to media reports, the country’s only refinery near N'Djamena is underoperating at around 1/3 to 2/3 of its maximum capacity.

⏩But the fuel sales do not tell the whole story here. Judging by the media reports and the presence of representatives of the Chinese oil giant CNPC at the meeting (the man dozing sweetly on the right side of the photo), another important topic of the meeting was the proposed Niger-Chad-Cameroon oil pipeline project.

🔸 The pipeline was supposed to connect CNPC's assets in Niger and Chad with an export port in Cameroon, but the project was put on hold in 2019 due to misunderstandings between the neighboring governments.

Now that the countries are facing the need to relaunch their collaboration, CNPC will spare no effort to build to line of cooperation from crude deposits in Niger and Chad all the way to the Gulf of Guinea.

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