🇳🇬 The Congolisation of Nigeria

Since 2023, Nigeria has been determined to wash away its status as Africa’s gas station and invested heavily in what is expected to be the pillars of global fossil-fuel phaseout — solar panels and lithium used to produce batteries. Yet behind the large-scale investments still lies the same old exploitation of human labour.

🔸 Timeline of investments in Nigeria's lithium processing:

2023 — construction begins on Chinese Ganfeng Lithium Industry’s $250 million lithium processing plant.

2024 — still Chinese Avatar New Energy Materials launches another $250 million lithium processing plant.

October 2025 — these two plants along with smaller projects, had supposedly brought about $850 million in investments to Nasarawa State, Nigeria.

2025 — Nigeria's Minister of Solid Minerals Dele Alake announces total lithium investments of around $1.3 billion.

⏩ Nigeria has become a hotspot for Chinese investment in lithium processing. The $1.3 billion figure is the latest estimate from Nigerian authorities of China’s presence in the sector. One might think: foreigners are coming and, notably, not just mining and exporting raw ore but actually processing it locally — a dream, right?

A dream it would be — but what if all these investments and projects depend on low-paid, dangerous manual labour?

🚫 While we know there is simply no industrial lithium mining in Nigeria, all these shiny new Chinese plants rely on poor people whom economic hardship has left with no choice but to dig in the ground for the feedstock China needs — often illegally, often side by side with children.

"I can’t stop the children because throughout Nasarawa State, if you go to all the lithium mining sites, all the work being done at the mining sites is illegal. It’s not the work of a company. If companies come and realize there is lithium on the site, they will not allow children to work there; they will fence off the entire area and ensure that no one enters, especially children, who are beggars and who, if they do not work, cannot afford to feed and care for their families."

— said one illegal miner to journalists in 2024.

That's the cost of Nigeria's lithium rush. And so another African country is emerging — just like the Democratic Republic of Congo with its cobalt — where the minerals powering the world’s bright green future are extracted by the hands of hungry children.

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🇨🇲 Passive Income for Everyone — You Just Need to…

To earn passive income that will instantly make you a millionaire, you only need to meet 2 simple conditions: 1) have a neighbouring landlocked country with oil, and 2) lay a long pipeline across your territory so that it can sell that oil through you.

🌐 This is exactly what Cameroon did — and its national treasury estimates since the beginning of the year it has earned 20.3 billion CFA francs (about $34 million).

Since 2003, the 1,070-km Chad–Cameroon pipeline has transported oil from the Doba Basin in Chad to a marine terminal near Kribi, under a scheme designed jointly with the World Bank and a consortium originally led by ExxonMobil and Petronas.

🔸 But even this jackpot — obtained without much effort — did not satisfy Cameroon’s authorities. Their target for this year is to squeeze about four times more out of the pipeline (around $140 million).

❓ On what basis Cameroon calculated this figure, and whether the target came to Paul Biya in a dream, remains unclear. In recent years, Cameroon has usually earned exactly what it earns now — between 36 and 40 billion CFA francs annually.

🔸 For income earned from a project in which your role is simply to let oil flow from the fields to the ports, the current numbers are more than acceptable. And if oil from Niger also begins flowing through this same pipeline, Cameroon may well see even more wealth.

A pity that only a tiny fraction of the population will ever feel it.

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Europe To Help End Colonialism?

Wherever one is — in Nigeria with its lithium, in Guinea with its iron, in Ghana with its still untapped aluminium — they must understand that Africa now is at the centre of a struggle for critical minerals between "the North" and China. And China, having concentrated almost all global processing capacity for key solid minerals, is clearly winning.

🌐  Against this backdrop, the EU–Africa summit held earlier this week in Luanda was striking: European countries promised Africa — attention — liberation from colonial-style exploitation.

“We will promote the sustainable development of value chains to enhance the capacity of local industries to participate in regional and global markets and to diversify and secure global supply chains, for instance in the field of strategic and critical minerals.”

— states the Joint Declaration signed at the summit.

🌟 Words that touch the soul. But what stands behind them? What stands behind them is Europe’s desire to see mineral processing take place anywhere — anywhere except China.

But, is this good for African nations anyway?

✅ Of course it is — but only if governments ensure Europe truly delivers on the following:

⏩ Europeans must actually invest in building processing plants — so far, they prefer to fund railways and ports for export.

⏩ The new plants must be at least partly owned by local companies and fully staffed by local workers — if everything is owned by foreign capital, it is simply a new form of exploitation.

⏩ The level of domestic processing must continuously increase — if the new facilities merely sort ore for export, that is not local processing.

For fear of Chinese dominance, Europe may now promise anything. Promises are fine — but will the Europeans truly fulfill them?

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⏰ Better Late Than Never

Zimbabwe has finally started thinking about the future — at a moment when the future has already been here for several months.

🌐  The authorities of Zimbabwe have at last considered raising the gold royalty. Instead of the previous modest 5%, royalties on gold will now range from 3 to 10% depending on the price (and at current prices, that means 10%).

⏩ Gold exports brought the country around $2.5 billion in 2024 and remain Zimbabwe’s main source of hard currency. Gold accounts for roughly one-third of all export value.

📈 Gold prices have been rising for several years, but especially sharply over the past six months — prompting many governments to revise old mining terms in favour of greater state participation or higher taxes. Mali, Burkina Faso, and Côte d’Ivoire moved in this direction long ago, while some others, for instance Ghana and Nigeria, are still falling behind.

Even though the decision was clearly taken late, most analysts expect gold prices to remain high for the next few years — so Zimbabwe will still have time to catch some profits.

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✏️ Peculiarities of East African Bureaucracy

Building a giant pipeline without paperwork — no problem. Listening to human rights defenders — “your application was filed on the wrong form.”

🌐 On 27 November 2025, the Appellate Division of the East African Court of Justice upheld an earlier decision to dismiss a case filed in 2020 by civil society groups from Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, which challenged the construction of the EACOP oil pipeline running from Uganda to Tanzania’s coast.

❗️ While the petition raised concerns about risks to the Lake Victoria Basin, the lack of approval from Uganda’s National Environment Management Authority, missing environmental impact assessments at the start of construction, the appellate judges cited a violation of technical filing procedures.

⏩ According to independent research and media reports, the pipeline — being built by France’s TotalEnergies and China’s CNOOC — has displaced around 13,000 people in Uganda and Tanzania.

National authorities and courts are even more favourable toward the oil giants and their project. There is nothing left to hope for — only to wait until the roughly 1,500 kilometres of land in Uganda and Tanzania turn into one long strip of oil spills, just like Nigeria's Ogoniland.

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On the Road

☢️ The internet is overflowing with media reports claiming that Niger is selling uranium from the Arlit mine — confiscated by Niamey from the French company Orano — to Russia.

Reports and supposed visual evidence of the allegedly "secret" transport of uranium by truck are so aplenty that the only thing missing now is an interview with the drivers.

➡️ However, there is no reliable evidence whatsoever about the “buyer” or the ultimate destination of these uranium manoeuvres. In fact, beyond Orano’s own statements, there is no confirmation that the uranium was moved anywhere at all.

Besides, it is completely unclear why Russia would even need Nigerien uranium — Russia already has plenty of its own.

👁 In any case, any cross-border transport of uranium will ultimately be reported in detail to France, to the IAEA, and to everyone else, since Niger clearly does not intend to be involved in any nuclear proliferation.

Who knows — perhaps all these reports are themselves a way of keeping the public informed that uranium is merely being displaced, so that no one thinks it is going to be used to make a nuclear device?

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How Colonial-Era Infrastructure Shapes Africa Today

🚢 In the early 1900s, European colonial powers began building railways across Africa to move soldiers deeper into the continent and extract resources for export. Although more than 60 years have passed since independence, this colonial pattern of infrastructure design still keeps many countries dependent on overseas metropoles.

➡️ Very few states have cross-border railways — a direct consequence of the partition of Africa by European empires. Today, this severely hinders trade between neighbours.

For example, to transport a large shipment from Tamale to Abuja, one must first take it to the coast — load it onto a ship — send the ship to Lagos — and only then can railways be used.

➡️ The geography of human settlement itself became colonial.

For instance, today most of Kenya’s population lives along the line from Mombasa to Uganda, built by the British in the early 20th century, even though these areas were originally desert.

As a result, large segments of the population — in Kenya and elsewhere — have become economically dependent on exports. Their wellbeing now depends on the continuation of this system.

🏭 Finally, even today, railways built from mines and plantations to the coast shape investment patterns.

Who would build a serious factory in a poor, remote region, when they can open a new mining complex in an area already served by a colonial-era railway?

It is a vicious cycle of endless dependence on exports. The only way to break it is to deliberately develop infrastructure across the whole country — something very few governments are willing or able to do.

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🇳🇬 Nigeria’s Glass Ceiling

Nigeria’s refineries lack the crude oil they need to operate — despite being the largest oil producer in Africa. Why so?

🌐 The Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority estimates that in 2025 the country’s oil refineries used only 61.58% of their installed capacity.

🔍 The main obstacle is that instead of supplying domestic refineries, crude oil is flowing abroad. For decades, Nigeria lacked its own refineries, so exporting crude became the norm — and more importantly — exports bring in foreign currency, which, given the naira’s high inflation, is far more attractive than selling crude on the domestic market.

⏩Meanwhile, the government is working in the wrong direction: Nigeria is mostly encouraging the construction of new refineries when it should be compelling producers to supply crude at home.

🔸 At the moment, Nigeria has issued licences for refinery projects with a combined capacity of 1.2 million barrels / day — virtually the country’s entire current production — but all of them are stuck at the design stage because there is no guaranteed domestic crude supply.

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Congolese Minister Teases the US

🌐 The DRC’s Minister of Mines reminded that the country’s copper industry is owned by Chinese money — and hinted that the country is open to other partners as well.

“We can criticize China, we can criticize some bad practices of some Chinese operators — not all of them, there are also very good ones — but let’s not forget that it is China, through its investments, that allows us to hold second place in the world as a copper producer today,”

Louis Watum Kabamba said during a press briefing.

When it comes to the United States, the DRC government has gone from admiration to resentment within a year.

🔴 Even before Donald Trump came to power, President Félix Tshisekedi spent generously on lobbyists in Washington and tried through every channel to convey to the would-be dealmaker his desire to see the US act as a mediator in the conflict in eastern DRC in exchange for mineral concessions.

🤝 The plan to kill two birds with one stone — to find someone who would put pressure on Rwanda and M23, and to balance China’s economic influence.

But American partners never came to save the Congolese economy, and with each passing day Congo looks more and more like a mineral appendage of China.

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⚖️ Company = Country?
[ Minerals In Numbers ]

Comparing the market value of resource giants operating in Africa with the national GDP of some countries, one may feel terrified.

➡️ For instance take ExxonMobil, which holds oil and gas concessions in Angola, Nigeria, and Mozambique. Its estimated value is enormous — about $490 billion.

For comparison, Ghana’s annual GDP is around 80 billion dollars, which means that 6 years of hard work by the entire population of Ghana is valued at less than a single American oil company.

➡️ If we look only at solid minerals, the biggest foreigner is Rio Tinto, which mines resources from Guinea to Madagascar.

In contrast to the made-of-money ExxobMobile, it is worth only about $120 billion — roughly the same amount produced in a year by all 56 million people living in Kenya.

In light of all this, I propose we sell ExxonMobil and give the whole of Ghana a six-year paid vacation. 🤔

#MineralsInNumbers

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🌐 Weekly News Digest on Africa’s Mineral Industries [ November 24 – November 30 ]

This was a week of lawsuits and uranium.

💡Here are the key highlights:

🇦🇴 Angola
- At the Luanda summit Europe promises to support local processing in Africa

🇨🇲 Cameroon
- Cameroon earns $34 million from gas transit in2025

🇹🇩 Chad
- In the North the military pushes artisanal miners off the deposits

🇨🇩 DR Congo
- Human rights advocates sue Apple for using conflict minerals

🇲🇼 Malawi
- Malawi starts uranium ore extraction

🇲🇱 Mali
- Mali and Canadian gold major Barrick resolve their dispute

🇲🇷 Mauritania
- Mauritania attracts $275 investments into its only railway

🇲🇿 Mozambique
- Mozambique decided to create a state super-consortium to supply gas to South Africa

🇳🇪 Niger
- Insurgents attack the Chinese oil giant CNPC's pipeline near Agadem
- Visual evidence and rumors say uranium reserves are being moved from the Arlit mine

🇳🇬 Nigeria
- Dangote Refinery partners with American and Indian companies to double its capacity
- Nigeria's refineries get stuck at 62% of potential capacity

🇸🇩 Sudan
- Sudan says in 2024-2025 the RSF smuggled >$850 million worth of gold to the UAE

🇹🇿 Tanzania
- Tanzania to start construction of the Bagamoyo deep-water port in December 2025

🇺🇬 Uganda & Kenya
- Kenya and Uganda open a major plant to process local iron ore
- The East African Court of Justice refuses to renew a case against the EACOP pipeline
- Uganda discovered a 600 million barrels oil field

🇿🇼 Zimbabwe
- Zimbabwe raises gold royalty to 10%

#NewsDigest

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True Prophet Appears in Nigeria

Nigerian pastor, lawyer, and close ally of former President Buhari, Tunde Bakare, declared in an address on 30 November that the reason the US is so concerned about the fate of Nigeria and its Christian population is Nigerian oil.

🌐 Although he is a highly controversial figure, as if to confirm his claim, the very next day the American oil giant Chevron acquired a 40% stake in an offshore project in Nigeria, near the Niger Delta.

🔸 Since September, several members of the US Congress — including infamous Senator Ted Cruz — have suddenly started making noise in Washington about a real long-standing issue in Nigeria related to terrorism, particularly threats against Christians in the North.

⏩ It is clear that the United States does not genuinely care about Nigerian Christians and the real goal is to push the country to allow the deployment of US military and intelligence infrastructure in West Africa

🔸 This will allow in turn to protect American resource interests, including ventures of Chevron, which have recently expanded not only in Nigeria but also into Guinea-Bissau.

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Say My Name

📍 Illegal gold mining exists in almost every country — but only where illegal miners are truly numerous do their communities begin to form their own culture, and locals give them special names.

🇿🇦 In South Africa, illegal miners are called zama zamas.

The term comes from the isiZulu verb ukuzama, meaning “to try” or “to take a chance.” Today the term refers to people who enter abandoned underground mines with no safety guarantees.

🇬🇭 In Ghana, small-scale such outlaws are known as galamsey.

Linguists link the word to the English phrase “gather them and sell.” The name reflects an important fact: illegal gold mining in Ghana does not take place in deep mines but on alluvial deposits along rivers.

🇿🇼 In Zimbabwe, illegal or unregistered gold seekers are known as makorokoza.

Makorokoza is a term meaning simply “illegal miners.” Although the word carries a negative connotation, it is often used by local cultural figures as a badge of identity — a way of highlighting their connection to grassroots culture and to risk.

❓ Remarkably, these names genuinely reflect different attitudes toward fortune-seekers and the different methods of gold extraction across countries.

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Nigeria Is Losing Its Gas

Economic expediency still trumps ecology and rational resource use

🔥 In a single month — September 2025 — more than 11.3 billion cubic feet of gas from Nigeria’s went straight into the sky as flame and smoke.

🔸 Although associated gas can be captured, sold, used in other sectors of the economy, or even reinjected into oil reservoirs to aid production, oil companies continue to flare gas simply because it is cheaper than ensuring its reuse.

⏩ Remarkably, the government plays along with corporate interests. The gas-flaring data in question was published by the state oil company NNPC, while the relevant regulator, NOSDRA, has stopped sharing this information with the public since May.

⚠️ The result is enormous environmental harm. The gas flared in September alone produced around 630,000 tonnes of CO₂ — to emit the same amount it would alternatively take some 140,000 cars and an entire year.

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Rats Are Leaving the Ship

While the French and the Mozambican authorities hope to profit at any cost, Britain has assessed the real odds and walked away

🌐 The UK has withdrawn its $1.15 billion export credit guarantee for TotalEnergies’ gas project in Mozambique, in Cabo Delgado.

🔸 Officials described the reversal of the deal dating back to 2020 as a response to financial risks for British taxpayers in light of stricter UK legal requirements.

⏩ In reality, the reason for the royal retreat is simple: the TotalEnergies project is surrounded by swarms of extremists.

🔸 The project had been on hold since 2021 but was restarted in November, despite the fact that the threat from insurgents has only grown.

⏳ The French at TotalEnergies and the Mozambican authorities are tired of waiting endlessly for profits — especially now that alternative gas export sources are on the verge of depletion.

Soon we will see whether Mozambique and TotalEnergies win the roulette with the insurgents.

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Green Energy, But Not For All

Many corporations love to boast about their environmental credentials — and some even do so without lying — but in certain places green energy is simply the only option

🌐 DRC's major copper company Ivanhoe Mining, backed by Chinese and Arab investors, has launched at its Kamoa-Kakula copper mine what it calls “the largest and greenest copper smelter in Africa”.

🔌 At the event —where the investors also paraded traditional rulers — the company noted that the enormous 60-megawatt giant furnace would be powered by one of the DRC’s hydroelectric plants.

⚡️ The achievement is indeed commendable, but its scale fades a bit once you consider that the DRC has virtually no “non-green” electricity at all — roughly 99% of its power already comes from hydropower.

⛔️ So far, companies are trying to create a national image by inviting traditional chiefs, while only about 22% of the Congolese have access to electricity. Congolese green power generation is not the result of elaborate climate policy but of poverty and economic underdevelopment.

Let us thank the Chinese investors for not building oil burners all around Congo — but it would be nice if ordinary people could plug into the green socket too.

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🇬🇧 Traditional British Casino

Investors from the foggy British Isles are once again trying to seek their fortune in Uganda — once again with very slim chances of success

☕️ In 2027, the UK-based Blencowe Resources plans to begin graphite mining in Uganda. If the project succeeds — which is unlikely — Uganda will become the 4th African country to produce graphite.

🔖 On social media, the company is trying to tap into anti-Chinese sentiment and promises a graphite supply chain independent of China.

⚰️ However, in a world where China controls about 3/4 of global graphite production and practically monopolises its processing, a single round of price dumping would send this project straight to the graveyard of past British attempts to re-enter Uganda.

⏳ British investors have tried to play big in Uganda’s extractive sector before, but without much success. During the colonial period, Uganda did have some copper mining, but the colony’s main profile was agricultural.

➡️ In modern times, the British company Tullow Oil drilled the first successful oil wells near Lake Albert — but never managed to start production and eventually sold its assets to the more patient French.

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👑 Mali Closes the Era of Turbulence

Good accounting has earned Assimi Goïta an additional $1.2 billion

💵 Mali has just recovered about $1.2 billion from its mining sector after a large-scale audit of mining companies’ accounts.

➡️ This outcome symbolically closes the turbulent period that followed the introduction of a new Mining code in 2023, which ensured the state gets a greater share of gold profits. The code was followed by audits of companies’ past operations, renegotiations with foreign mining companies, and nearly two years of dispute with the country’s largest miner Barrick.

📈 The special debt-recovery commission has so far collected 761 billion CFA francs, almost twice the initial estimates of what companies owed.

Now that all renegotiations are over and Barrick has accepted the new rules, Mali can confidently name itself Africa's most impressive example of successful resource nationalism policies.

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A Poor Transnational Corporation Has Been Hurt 😢

TotalEnergies’ gas project has always been extremely important to the Mozambican authorities — but only few could have guessed to what extent

🛡 Apparently having run out of domestic problems, Mozambique’s president has decided to defend the oil and gas giant TotalEnergies, after a European human rights group recently accused it of being linked to the deaths of around 100 innocent people near its project in Cabo Delgado.

“There are those who take advantage of a sensitive context to spread disinformation and create an environment hostile to investment … There is disinformation and manipulation of public opinion claiming there is no respect for human rights”,

Daniel Chapo said during a visit to Cabo Delgado.

💊 His remarks are clearly aimed at restoring at least public confidence in the project, which has already suffered from recent withdrawals of foreign partners in the context of persistent terrorist threat.

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💡 1,000 Years of Light
[ Minerals In Numbers ]

Have you ever wondered how much oil has already been pumped out of the planet — and how much is still left?

🛢 When it comes to Africa, calculations by the South African organisation Africa Energy Chamber tell us that Africa has produced around 420 billion barrels of oil equivalent over the period of recorded extraction.

A barrel of oil equivalent (BOE) is a unit of measurement equal to the energy released by burning one barrel of crude oil, allowing both oil and natural gas to be measured with a single metric.

⚡ 420 billion BOE is an enormous amount of oil and gas — enough to power and heat the entire continent for approximately 715 years at current levels of electricity consumption.

⌛️ The number itself is both awe-inspiring and depressing. But what looks even more discouraging is the fact that the remaining known reserves of oil and gas are less than half of what has already been produced — 180 billion BOE versus 420 billion.

In other words, we have already extracted 70% of known reserves. And the saddest part is that the benefits have gone to all and sundry — foreigners, local elites, armed groups — except ordinary people.

#MineralsInNumbers

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Create Waste and Walk Away

The French were apparently unable to clean up properly before leaving Niger

☢️ Niger’s Minister of Justice, Alio Daouda, announced that the state plans to sue Orano, the French state-owned nuclear company, over several million tonnes of radioactive waste at an abandoned uranium site near Arlit in the north of the country.

Radiation measurements at the site show 7–10 microsieverts/hour, compared to the normal 0.5 microsieverts/hour and samples contain Bismuth-207 and Chromium-10, both dangerous to human health even at a distance of 10 metres.

⚙️ The French had been operating uranium mines in Arlit for decades. Independent field studies by Greenpeace and French human-rights groups in 2009 and 2010 already documented abnormally high radiation levels in residential areas and uranium contamination in drinking water.

🗑 In 2025, the authorities ended cooperation with Orano and nationalised the mine. Although the Minister of Justice did not say it outright, it seems likely that the “sale of uranium” to Russia that the French media have been lamenting recently actually referred to radioactive waste — which the government decided to transport for processing.

Ironically, now it looks like the French prompted the Niger-sells-our-uranium outcry — and in doing so revived themselves the long-standing issue of careless treatment of nuclear waste. Whoever in Niger came up with this PR move deserves a bonus.

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