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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🎞 Israeli Mafia in Congo

A Jewish businessman helping to launder billions of dollars in one of the poorest countries on Earth — it sounds either like a joke or a Hollywood thriller starring Nicolas Cage

🛫. Young Israeli diamond trader Dan Gertler arrived in Congo in the late 1990s. An inexperienced businessman might easily have stayed unnoticed — if the country’s new president Laurent-Désiré Kabila had not been in desperate need of cash.

Dan Gertler (born 23 December 1973) is an Israeli billionaire businessman in natural resources. Until 2022, his group had mining and oil interests in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and has invested in diamonds, iron ore, gold, cobalt, copper, agriculture, and banking. As of 2025 his fortune was estimated at $1.5 billion by Forbes.

💎 That is when the diamond dealer caught the government’s eye. Gertler offered the fragile president $20 million, and in return received a monopoly over diamond trade in the DRC.

🇺🇸 After the death of the elder President Kabila, Gertler became a close ally of his heir, Joseph, serving as his wallet and lobbyist. He even connected the new president with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice — a meeting that helped Kabila secure international recognition.

🗳 In 2011, elections caught the regime short of cash again — and once more Gertler was there to help. He offered to buy state shares in mining projects.

🇨🇭 To do this, Gertler teamed up with Swiss giant Glencore, which still mines copper and cobalt in Congo. Together they carried out more than a dozen deals worth over a billion dollars.

💸True, the prices were far below market value — but Kabila did not care, as he won the re-election.

⛔️Gertler’s schemes were so brazen that even the US imposed sanctions on him in 2017. In 2022, Kinshasa did reclaim some of the assets gifted to him — this time at an outrageously inflated price.

And so he — as well as his Swiss partners — continues to live comfortably, profiting from minerals stolen from the Congolese people.

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A New Minister in Namibia

📰 Namibia has appointed a journalist as its new Minister of Industry and Mines.

🌐 The President of Namibia has nominated Modestus Amutse — a former journalist, deputy minister of information, and chair of the parliamentary committee on legal and constitutional affairs — as the country’s new Minister of Industry, Energy and Mines.

Namibia is a major producer of uranium and diamonds, and has discovered large offshore oil reserves in the Orange Basin. Its first crude production may begin around 2030.

🚩 The ministerial seat Amutse has received is highly influential but also volatile — the president frequently reshuffles industrialisation ministers, and for a brief period in October she even held the portfolio herself.

⏩ Amutse’s appointment may reflect a desire to install someone from outside the entrenched industrial and mining networks, someone who would be less tied to existing elites and more directly accountable to the president.

🔸 Alternatively, his background in PR and IT may have been decisive factor - instrumental in terms of establishing new communication patterns and maintaining stronger informational oversight over miners.

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Côte d’Ivoire’s Hazardous Flying Dutchman
[Cost of Greed]

Twenty years ago, off the coast of Côte d’Ivoire, an event occurred in which no one drowned — yet it could easily overshadow the tragic sinking of the Titanic.

In 2006, a multinational company called Trafigura faced an unusual problem: it had purchased an extremely sulphurous but cheap petroleum product known as coker gasoline, which needed to be somehow refined into regular fuel.

⏩ The goal was not only to refine the hazardous substance, but also to save as much as possible along the way.⏪

⚓️ Instead of hiring a proper refinery, Trafigura decided to process the toxic feedstock at sea — on an old ship called Probo Koala, using an outdated method known as "caustic washing", in which coker gasoline is treated with caustic soda.

☣️ The scheme worked, and the company sold the resulting fuel for $19 million — but what remained on board was toxic waste.

💵 And once again money was accorded priority: Trafigura rejected an offer to treat the waste in the Netherlands for $620,000, and the Probo Koala began wandering along the coast of West Africa in search of anyone willing to rid it of its poisonous burden.

⚠️ Eventually the company hired shady contractors in Abidjan for miserable $17,000. Upon arrival, after the ship unloaded the waste, the material was allegedly spread by subcontractors across the city and its surroundings, dumped in waste grounds, public landfills, and along roads in populated areas.

In the weeks that followed, the BBC reported that

17 people died

,

23 were hospitalized

, and another

40,000 sought medical treatment

.

🤝 For fear of prosecution, Trafigura agreed in 2007 to pay the Ivorian government around $200 million — for an indulgence that granted the company sweeping immunity from prosecution.

Hazardous waste still lie in the soil underneath Abidjan.

#CostOfGreed

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🤖 Now It’s Safe for Sure

An unusual cutting-edge solution has been introduced to protect pipelines in the Niger Delta

🌐 Pipeline Infrastructure Nigeria Limited, the company responsible for monitoring Nigeria’s Trans Niger Pipeline, has decided to hire town criers.

🙂 The idea is that the criers will (no doubt sincerely) sell the pipeline to people in 215 communities across Rivers, Bayelsa, Imo, and Abia States — and keep watch over local sentiment toward the project.

➡️ Thus, instead of addressing the source of popular discontent — endless oil spills and resource exploitation — the pipeline beneficiaries opted for primitive propaganda.

In any case, talking to people and engaging in dialogue is always better than cleansing activists.

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👋 China. Go Out.

How China’s policy of encouraging overseas investment created lunar landscapes across Africa

🌍 In the 1990s, China launched its “Go Out” policy, encouraging state-owned and private entities to expand abroad in search of resources and investment opportunities. One of the main drivers was the need to secure mineral supplies at low prices to sustain a slowing domestic economy.

“We need to implement a ‘going outside’ strategy, encouraging enterprises with comparative advantages to make investments abroad, to establish processing operations, to exploit foreign resources with local partners, to contract for international engineering projects, and to increase the export of labor.”

— Zhu Rongji, Premier of the State Council
Report to the National People’s Congress, 2001

👥 Alongside state companies, thousands of ordinary fortune-seekers from also headed overseas, emboldened by the prospect of “quick enrichment” amid rising gold prices.

🌍 The influx of Chinese enthusiasts was most visible in West Africa, especially Ghana. Estimates suggest that between 2008 and 2013, more than 50,000 Chinese nationals entered the country to participate in illegal gold mining.

⚙️ But Chinese diggers were notable not only for their numbers. The “Go Out” policy allowed them to bring in heavy machinery on a massive scale — something previously unseen in illegal gold mining.

⏩ The scheme was simple:

🔸A major Chinese investor arrives in Country X with heavy equipment backed by the Chinese government and its loans under the "Going Out" policy
🔸Part of that equipment is then written off and quietly sold to illegal groups
🔸Those groups use it to level forests and dig enormous pits nearby.

🏁 As a result, local artisanal miners are either pushed out or join the Chinese operations, and the soil is left contaminated with mercury and lead all across the continent.

#PolicyReview

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