⚡️ Ten people died in the collapses of two gold mines in southeastern Senegal between December 12 and 17.

Reports say that 9 of the deceased were Malian nationals and 1 was a citizen of Burkina Faso.

The victims used to undertake nighttime intrusions into mines near the Senegal-Mali border which were officially sealed or where gold mining was prohibited.

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Paris Prosecutor's Office vs. Niger

☢️ Apparently having established perfect order at home, the Paris prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation into the alleged sale of uranium from the Arlit mine, nationalized by Niger from the French company Orano in June.

⚖️ The Paris Prosecutor's Office has earned its "good reputation" through its high-quality public service, including cases against Macron’s political rival Marine Le Pen and Telegram founder Pavel Durov. Now it has undertaken to apply its vast and profound expertise in the deserts of northern Niger.

⚠️ Remarkably, media reports that first made this investigation public on December 19 described it as a case of “robbery by an organized group with a view to serve the interests of a foreign power,” even though the official opening date of the case is August 18, when no uranium or anything else was being sold or moved from Arlit at all.

🔮 Not only were the French investigators apparently able to foresee in a crystal ball the very act of transportation — but they also seem to already know the result of the “investigation”, with Russia likely to be accused of stealing French uranium as part of the “organized group.”

⏩ Since there is no real way for Paris even to find out what exactly (uranium itself or some nuclear waste) Niger is transporting from the Arlit mine, the probe looks more like a performance, designed to show the French public that the government is not sitting idly by and is trying to defend the French interests.

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Extortion or Asset Seizure?

⚡️ Twelve miners were killed and three others abducted in Nigeria’s Plateau State during an attack by unidentified armed men on Tuesday, December 16.

⏩ Why the attackers felt the need to kill the miners remains unclear. As a rule, criminal groups prefer to impose “taxes” on artisanal miners or demand a cut from the extracted ore as a levy. Killing such a source of income is, on the contrary, unprofitable.

⏩ The likely explanation is either that the miners refused to pay or that the initial objective was to drive them off the deposit altogether.

⏩ Artisanal miners are frequently targeted in such attacks. In the past, these incidents were mostly typical for the mineral-rich but less developed North of the country. Now, similar attacks are increasingly being reported closer to Nigeria’s central regions.

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South Africa Is a Unique Country
[ Policy Review ]

🇿🇦 What sets South Africa apart from the rest of Africa?

🚩 South Africa is unique not only because there is only one South Africa in the world. There is a second factor as well. Like many African countries, South Africa today mainly exports raw minerals abroad — but for SA this was not always the case.

⚙️ Until the 2010s, South Africa had its own strong mineral processing industry, especially in metals. With large metal deposits, the country built its own plants and exported not raw materials but refined metal products.

📉 However, from the 2010s onward, South Africa has ironically begun to slide back toward the all-African norm, as deindustrialization set in. The chart shows how, starting in 2009, exports of metal ores steadily caught up with exports of refined metals, and from 2017 onward, raw material exports permanently exceeded exports of processed products.

This situation resulted from several factors.

⏩ First, there was rapid expansion of processing capacity in China and other Asian countries with cheaper labor than in South Africa. South Africa found itself in the so-called “middle-income trap,” where further investment is constrained by relatively high wage levels.

⏩ Second, currency. In the 2010s, the rand depreciated several times, making exports more profitable than domestic processing. Exports made more rand per tonne of ore, while wages and local expenses remained the same.

⏩ Finally, electricity issues. Electricity is a key input for metallurgy. In the 2010s, the state-owned utility Eskom repeatedly raised tariffs at double-digit rates following years of lack of investment in new generation capacity in the 2000s.

🔽 As a result, SA now finds itself in a paradoxical situation. A country that 20 years ago would not lament exploitation and resource extraction is now turning into a kind of raw material appendage for China’s processing industry.

#PolicyReview

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Pocket Money for Australians 🇦🇺

🦘 Australia’s Marvel Gold is getting rid of the Yanfolila gold project in southern Mali, selling it to a local company Askiya Mineral Resources for $1.94 million. Despite its favorable location — close to major routes leading into Guinea — the asset is effectively being sold for next to nothing.

⏩ The reasons are stricter regulations and the country’s ongoing instability. Although Yanfolila lies almost 100 kilometers from the main areas of activity of JNIM, the Australians have probably overestimated the risks, especially given the rather lackluster pace of production.

⏩ Against the backdrop of such news, one may think that Mali is seeing some kind of domestic industry emergence and departure of foreign investors — however, past experience clearly shows that the main players have been, and remain, foreign companies.

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Old Story in the New Year

Mali’s economy will grow faster, but on obsolete “fuel”

📈 The IMF has published its forecast for Mali’s GDP growth in 2026: 5.5%, up from 4.1% in 2025.

⚙️ The main drivers of future growth are higher gold production combined with an improvement in security.

🥇 It is unclear how the IMF knows that the security situation will improve, but when it comes to higher gold output, the Fund is clearly referring to the resumption of operations at the country’s largest gold mine, Loulo-Gounkoto.

🔽 While 5.5% is a very strong figure, roughly twice the global average, relying on gold as the main source of this growth is a problem. As long as it is not replaced by industry, knowledge, and services, the country’s development remains dependent on gold prices, the size of remaining deposits, and the whims of gold producers.

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ℹ️Troubles with the Law ℹ️

A year of persuading everyone that the law must be obeyed

✔️ Côte d’Ivoire has finally dealt with all gold producers who had refused to pay the increased 8% gold mining royalty.

📅 The law raising the levy from 6% to 8% was adopted back in January, but many producers refused to comply, citing the terms of their contracts allegedly not allowing for an increase in royalties.

⏩ Once again, it turned out that when the state and private companies lock horns, the former always has more patience and resources than the latter — and "investors" do not run away anywhere.

❓ A fine example, isn’t it, Zimbabwe?

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🇿🇼 Zimbabwe: Marange Blood Diamonds
[Cost of Greed]

🌟 In June 2006, one of the most significant diamond discoveries of recent times was made in the rural Marange area of eastern Zimbabwe, offering its economy a unique development chance.

🌟 By 2012, Zimbabwe had become the world’s 4th-largest diamond producer, while Marange had become synonymous with blood diamonds and human rights abuses, drawing international attention, leading to sanctions against Zimbabwe and involvement of the global diamond watchdog.

🌟 At the heart of the tragedy was the government’s 2008 decision to expel individual miners from the deposit, even though in a burst of populism after the discovery it had initially declared the field open to everyone.

✈️ Once the government itself wanted to capture diamond profits, the military was sent to the site. In helicopters. With machine guns. To drive out artisanal miners.

🔥 Unsurprisingly, this decision was a straight route to tragedy. During the three-week Operation "No Return," from October 27 to November 16, at least 200 people were killed, while the military established near-direct control over the deposit.

💵 The troops deployed to Marange set up labor camps at the site. Their control lasted until November 2009, when the government began issuing mining licenses. Of the 6 main companies that received them, only one was not directly owned by the government itself.

🌟 The massacre and forced labor drew the attention of the international community. In 2008-2011, the United States and the European Union imposed sanctions on companies operating there, including the state-run Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation. In 2009, members of the Kimberley Process banned the sale of diamonds from Marange.

🌟 Although human rights abuses continued after 2011, international concern soon faded, and over time both the sanctions and the ban on diamond sales were lifted.

🔽 This allowed the state-owned companies to extract diamond profits and use them for off-budget financing of the army and secret services — but that is a topic for a separate post.

#CostOfGreed

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Just Like Adults

🚩 Guinea is planning to hold its first mining conference. The decision was prompted by the launch of the large Simandou iron project in the southeast of the country.

🛒 Unlike many conferences, whose organizers overtly seek to sale their countries’ resources, the event in Guinea will be more about showmanship and Guinea’s new status as an iron exporter. Even the name of the upcoming gathering — the Simandou Mining Summit — speaks for itself.

🇿🇦The main conference of this kind — Mining Indaba — is held annually in South Africa, but many countries enjoy organizing their own small mineral asset sales and not only countries — even Somaliland has its own mining conference.

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The Glass Is Half Full 🥛

Nigeria recovers a share of its oil

🌐 An association of Nigerian oil producers claims that more than half of Nigeria’s crude oil is now produced by indigenous companies.

⏩ Although no specific sources are provided for the estimates, the transfer of part of the oil sector into the hands of local producers is a well-known recent trend in the country.

🔸 In general, major foreign firms began selling their Nigerian assets around 2010, but in 2024–2025 the process intensified. The main pretext was oil theft and pipeline vandalism. Eni, ExxonMobil, Shell, and TotalEnergies all said farewell to some of their assets.

🔸 There was, however, a more important factor behind their exodus: as if by surprise, many of the departing companies had with unpaid, multimillion-dollar obligations to local communities for endless oil spills and environmental damage, which even attracted the attention of the UN.

⏩ So alongside the positive trend, there is another side: the assets are extremely old, requiring modernization, while new owners just cannot afford to clean up the environmental damage left behind by the majors.

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Cargo Cult in Gabon 🇬🇦

🌐 Inspired by the examples of Ghana and Mali, Gabon announces its own audit of the mining sector.

💪 The plans are ambitious: to make public all existing mining agreements in full and to conduct a comprehensive audit of contracts signed between 2010 and 2024.

📉 But unlike Mali, which has already carried out a similar review and recovered foregone revenues from mining companies, and Ghana, which is only planning to audit its mining sector in 2026, Gabon is unlikely to gain anything substantial from these efforts.

⏩ First, the main goal is not to put the house in order or provide transparency to the citizens, but to please the IMF, with which Gabon is negotiating possible financial support.

⏩ Second, although Gabon produces large volumes of manganese, mining accounts for only about 7% of extractive-sector revenues. The state earns most from oil, yet for some reason the government is in no hurry to make all oil agreements public.

⏩ In the end, this looks less like an audit and more like a fiction: examining a tiny sector, and not even for the sake of fairness, but to win the IMF’s favor. It is clear that the usefulness of such an exercise will be about the same as that of a makeshift wooden cargo plane.

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How Much More

🛢 The Nigerian government is proposing to resume exploration for new oil deposits in Ogoniland, Rivers State. Exploration in this region was halted several decades ago because of environmental degradation and civil unrest.

🔴 The area in question still looks on oil spill maps like a wartime fortified zone that underwent carpet bombing — and those are only the recent spills, linked to the fact that oil pipelines still run through the area. It is hard to imagine what would happen if new extraction projects were launched there as well.

🔥 In the 1990s, Ogoniland became a site of confrontation between oil companies, primarily Shell, and civil activists protesting environmental pollution from oil spills. Since then, many projects were shut down, but as we have written here before, the shutdown of operations resulted in the absence of cleanup, leaving the land contaminated to this day.

📌 The government began testing the waters back in 2024, and now an entire contingent of senior officials has been deployed to the area, including several ministers and the national security adviser.

➡️ Follow to stay informed - @devilsbelow

🌐 Weekly News Digest on Africa’s Mineral Industries [ December 15 – December 21 ]

That was a week darkened by several fatal mining incidents.

💡Here are the key highlights:

🇧🇼 Botswana

- Botswana intends to buy a diamond giant despite having no money and IMF alarms

🇹🇩 Chad

- Chad invites Algeria to it oil sector, seeking to exit dependence on China

🇨🇩 DR Congo

- Forced evictions in eastern DRC examined by the UK OECD body.

🇬🇭 Ghana

- Ghana may adopt a progressive royalty scale linked to mineral prices.

🇬🇼 Guinea

- Guinea wants to sell bauxite to an Emirati firm, whose mine it nationalized in July
- The end of construction of a 600-km railway for the Simandou iron megamine may leave thousands unemployed

🇲🇱 Mali

- Australia’s Marvel Gold sells a gold project in southern Mali to an indigenous enterprise
- Gold will drive Mali's economic growth in 2026

🇲🇿 Mozambique

- Australian company South32 threatens to shut down one of the largest aluminium smelters in Africa

🇳🇦 Namibia

- Namibia's revenues from gold and uranium exceeded revenues from diamonds.

🇳🇪 Niger

- Paris Prosecutor's Office investigates Niger's uranium affairs

🇳🇬 Nigeria

- Nigeria's oil tycoon Aliko Dangote accuses the head of the Nigerian downstream regulator of corruption
- Nigerian President dismisses the heads of two key oil and fuel regulators after Aliko Dangote's criticism
- 12 miners killed and three others abducted by unidentified armed men on December 16

🇸🇳 Senegal

- Ten people died in the collapses of two gold mines in southeastern Senegal between December 12 and 17.

🇸🇴 Somalia

- Somaliland wants to start oil and mineral exploration by 2027.

🇿🇦 South Africa

- SA doubles coal exports to Israel

🇿🇼 Zimbabwe

- Seven people were killed and four others injured in a gold mine collapse in central Zimbabwe
- Zimbabwe will not raise gold royalties to 10% for current prices, according to the approved 2026 budget plan.

#NewsDigest

Devils Below

A Soft Power Playbook

🔊 A vivid guide to manipulating public opinion: a Zimbabwean NGO Centre for Natural Resource Governance, which lives on European and American grants, has published what it claims are images of illegal lithium exports from Zimbabwe to China.

🔸 Beyond the fact that real illegal exports cannot be photographed from the middle of a loading zone, the manipulation is also evident in the scale involved. No one would ever move such large volumes illegally and so openly.

🔸 Unfortunately, such manipulations may divert people's attention away from real instances of illegal schemes in the mineral industry and compromise the whole cause.

⏩ The images are still disturbing. The only thing that slightly softens the sight of thousands of big bags of lithium concentrate flowing abroad is the fact that Zimbabwe does, at least for now, appear to be pursuing in good faith a lithium localization policy, planning to ban all exports of unprocessed lithium from the country starting in 2027.

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An Evening Ritual of Overthinking

⚽️ Nigeria has just beaten Tanzania 2–1 at AFCON. At first glance, what do resources have to do with this? 🤔🤔

Without embarrassment, now I want to tie this article into the football championship currently taking place in Morocco. Reading endless news about mine collapses and pollution can drive anyone mad, so let’s turn to football — but how does it fit in here?

⏩ First, the somber part. This cheerful tournament quite openly serves as one of the image-building tools of TotalEnergies, the title sponsor of the event.

⏩ Second, Tanzania’s kit catches the eye. Tanzania officially brought three sets of uniforms, including a blue kit with a diamond-like pattern (though they weren’t wearing it today). But then the question arises: what does Tanzania itself have to do with diamonds?

💎 It would have seemed more logical for, say, Botswana’s players to wear something diamond-themed — diamonds there are now seen as the backbone and future of the nation. In Tanzania, by contrast, diamonds are relatively scarce and not strongly associated with the country.

🇹🇿 Although no firm confirmation could be found, it appears that the pattern on Tanzania’s shirts is not diamonds at all, but tanzanite — a unique gemstone mined only in Tanzania — albeit depicted rather unsuccessfully.

⏩ That's the way the team expresses their identity — even though it might not the most intuitive design.

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Debt Forces Haste

New disputes around the Cabo Delgado gas project

⚔️ A rift stroke the camp of Mozambique’s authorities and TotalEnergies. While both sides are eager to restart the Cabo Delgado gas project as quickly as possible, Total now pushes for more favorable terms by threatening delays.

💵 Project revenues are urgently needed by the government. Beyond delayed income, the issue is the $900 million bond debt, which awaits repayments in 2028. Cabo Delgado will produce its first gas in 2029 at the earliest.

🔥 Fully aware of this predicament, Total is refusing to relaunch the complex until the state agrees to extend the license and compensate the company for the 4-year shutdown caused by insurgent attacks in Cabo Delgado in 2021.

⏩ TotalEnergies is thereby trying to negotiate better terms with the government anticipating the lack of foreign currency to service its debts.

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Where Are Geopolitics?

🇲🇼 Though Malawi does nothing special, it's a nightmare for mining companies. Yet another "investor" has announced delays to its project in Malawi — this time, it is a niobium venture, now not expected to kick off before 2028.

Despite the presence of rare minerals and absence of competition, the premature demise of loudly announced projects is a Malawi classic.

❓ But why is that? Why do the international "investors" which are usually ready to kill each other for assets and which move thousands of tons of soil in neighboring countries do so bad in Malawi?

⏩ Malawi does have resources, but it has almost none of the “traditional” ones like oil or gold. So, companies usually go for something rarer. Over just the past few months, there have been announcements about uranium, rutile, and now niobium projects in the country.

⏩ Whenever deposits of yet another element from the depths of the periodic table are discovered, another British or Australian company spawns on the doorstep of the Malawian government, full of ambition to build a "China-free" supply of this unquestionably-useful-element-of-the-future. Very quickly, however, it becomes clear that while the foreigners have plenty of ambition, they have very little money.

⏩The financing problem in turn exists because the hypothetical guys on Wall Street cannot quite grasp why they should mine the unquestionably-useful-element-of-the-future in Malawi when there are countries with established production and the infrastructure. And what is niobium anyway?...

🔽 As a result, Malawi turns into a place of endless tragedy for companies that get licenses, loudly announce grand plans, and then sit on those licenses, waiting for some international bank to come and finance their plans.

#PolicyReview

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China Is Losing Partners

Chinese companies abandon one of their oldest allies in Africa

🌐 A 30-year chapter in the relationship between Chinese oil producers and Sudan has come to an end. Against the backdrop of ongoing fighting and the continued advance of the RSF, China’s CNPC is seeking to terminate its existing oil contracts, including its rights to Block 6.

🚩 For China, this is not only a financial loss but a symbolic one. In the 1990s, Sudan was one of the first frontiers of China’s oil expansion, as Beijing anticipated shortages in domestic production amid rapid economic growth.

💰 The financial implications are no less serious. Along with the loss of assets, Chinese analysts are warning that Sudan may soon be unable to service its debts to China. In addition, oil supplies from South Sudan, where CNPC is still present for now, are also under threat.

🔽 Such cases are the inevitable downside of China’s style of economic expansion. While Western investors often flee as soon as conditions stop being comfortable, Chinese companies can afford more stubbornness, backed by state support. But insensitivity to risk can also lead to a grim ending — as Sudan has shown.

➡️ Follow to stay informed - @devilsbelow

A Terrible Christmas Gift

🇨🇩 The Congo dips into the pockets of artisanal miners

🌐 The DRC government seems far more concerned about leaking revenues than about the M23 problem in the east. Having barely finished the saga of the cobalt export ban, the Congolese authorities moved on December 19 to ban processing units from accepting copper and cobalt from artisanal miners.

⚙️ These efforts are part of an old government strategy. Back in 2019, the state created a special company, Entreprise Générale du Cobalt (EGC), granting it a monopoly on purchasing cobalt from artisanal miners. Yet from its creation until now, EGC has managed to collect only about 1,000 tonnes of cobalt — some 20% of their annual production.

🔧 The purpose of the latest decision is obvious: to fix this imbalance. With plants and marketers no longer allowed to buy directly, miners will have no option to sell their ore to the nearest facility. The only way to get paid will be through EGC.

🔽 One might hope that this would finally put an end to child labor and the endless casualties resulting from poor safety conditions at cobalt and copper sites. But today it looks more like the government will simply pocket part of the revenue, while the citizens lose the already meager incomes they earned from artisanal mining.

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Dubious Results of the Year

🇳🇬 Niger has overcome its foreign trade deficit — but what did it cost?

🌐 In 2025, Niger’s exports finally exceeded the value of its imports, meaning it now has more hard currency to service debt, invest, and purchase goods abroad. Yet once again, oil was the main driver of this growth.

📈 Over the past few years, Niger has posted striking export growth: from CFA 0.6 billion in 2023 to 0.9 billion in 2024, and then to CFA 1.6 billion in 2025. A major factor was the launch of the oil pipeline to Benin in 2024, which made it possible to ship larger volumes of crude oil for sale.

⏩ For Niger, this is essentially a turning point. Either it begins reinvesting the revenues it is already earning into more promising sectors of the economy, or oil prices will fall (by the end of the year they are already quite low), or exports will take a hit from insurgents who are already working overtime to blow up pipelines — and the opportunity will be lost.

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Who Knows What Trump Wants? 🇺🇸

Where the White House’s interest in Nigeria comes from

💥 After a public polemic over the persecution of Christians in Nigeria, the United States went even further and carried out airstrikes on IS targets in northwestern Nigeria, on December 25. This once again raises the question: what lies behind this apparent obsession with interreligious relations on the other side of the world — humanitarianism, geopolitics, or a desire to get access to Nigerian resources?

🔸 The last option is suggested by a similar situation with Venezuela, where Trump has openly claimed its oil. Nigeria, however, is different. There've been no such statements, nor are there few signs that American economic interests have been infringed. Nigeria is Africa's largest exporter of crude to the US, and the Dangote refinery actively purchases crude and technology from the US itself.

⏩ However, this may well be linked to the recent noise around proposals to resume oil exploration in Nigeria's Ogoniland. There may be a deal with the US companies getting new oil permits, and in exchange the US will "help" Nigeria's government deal with extremists. This is particularly interesting given that the president's national security adviser Nuhu Ribadu is responsible for both issues.

🔸 This can hardly be simple humanitarianism. Christians are persecuted and human rights violated here and there. It is hard to believe that the White House resident would spend missiles out of sympathy for ordinary Nigerians.

⏩ The last option is geopolitics — more precisely, an attempt to establish some basic format of permanent US presence in West Africa, just to keep Nigeria and other countries withing the US sphere of influence.

⏩ It's not clear what the balance may be between these considerations. Today the oil factor seems to be an unlikely driver of the US interest in Nigeria — I would bet on geopolitics — however, it may well turn out vice-versa when the whole story unfolds.

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