🔵Chinese Mines Protected Better Than Embassies and Military Bases🔵

🇿🇼 Chinese mining supervisor Yang Zhian has been jailed for an effective 5 years after a court found him guilty of culpable homicide in the death of a Zimbabwean gold panner.

The incident happened at Long Fortune Mine, a gold site in Zimbabwe, when 31-year-old Pardon Gumbo was shot in the forehead on 5 March 2025.

🔸 That day the deceased and a group of artisanal miners had illegally entered the site. When a security guard failed to stop them, Zhian fired towards the group. Gumbo was struck on the forehead and later pronounced dead.

🔸The Bulawayo High Court acquitted Yang of murder but called use of a firearm “reckless,” sentencing him to eight years with three suspended, leaving an effective five.

💬The use of a firearm in those circumstances was completely reckless, said Justice Chivhayo, the judge who handed the sentence.

The family rejected small compensation offers and called the sentence inadequate. The fact that murder on the territory of a foreign mine in Zimbabwe is not considered murder, as if it were an embassy, is a disgrace, despite all the successes in Zimbabwe's industrial policy.

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Nigeria’s Central Bank has raised gold reserves to $3.5bn through buying locally refined bullion.

🌐 The Central Bank of Nigeria says the gold was refined to international standards and added to official reserves as part of a reserve diversification push. This reportedly brings the CBN’s total gold holdings to $3.5bn.

🔸 The bullion was aggregated by the Solid Minerals Development Fund, Nigeria’s fiscal vehicle for mining proceeds, and bought in naira at prices linked to London Bullion Market benchmarks.

🔸The CBN thus accumulates gold in this way, spending only the domestic currency that it issues itself. DRC, Ghana, Zimbabwe and many other nations also have similar policies.

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🔵March of memory🔵

A coalition of civil society groups in Nigeria says oil cannot restart in Ogoniland until demands on justice, cleanup and local shares are met.

🌐 The groups, speaking at a solidarity peace walk in Nigeria's Port Harcourt in late February, demanded that issues like environmental degradation, human rights abuses and others be addressed first to heal the wounds of the Ogoni people as core conditions.

🔸 The protesters organised under “Project Ogonize” — led by Tech4Rural, a Nigerian social start‑up using tech for environmental advocacy — demand environmental remediation and want host communities to get stakeholder ownership in operations.

🔸 The CSOs also recall the 1990 presentation of the Ogoni Bill of Rights, the 1995 execution of the Ogoni nine and the 2011 United Nations Environmental Program report on the oil pollution in the area— insisting the Federal Government and companies like Shell address past harms first.

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🔵Why Share Money With Foreigners?🔵

🌐Niger cancels operation agreements for three gold‑refining plants, citing repeated contract breaches. The government says it terminated conventions with the 3 companies at the 3 March 2026 council of ministers.

🔸The list of the ostracized included Italian COMINI SARL, British AFRIOR SA and Polish ECOMINE SA, all accused of failing to fund local development, prioritise employment for Nigeriens and respect environmental standards.

💬Only ECOMINE SA, after the second formal notice, gave a partial response seen as non‑performance, says the meeting report.

🔸 Under the 2019 agreements with the government, the 3 companies were expected to build and run new gold refineries. They also had the right to export and sell abroad everything that came to their plants, thus profiting from Niger's gold.

While the terminations follow formal warnings sent on 17 February 2025 and 23 July 2025, the timing most likely coincides with a prolonged rise in gold prices and the outstanding hike in them after the outbreak of another war. Now Niger will be able to keep extra profits from gold trading at home.

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🔵China Will Profit From US' Ambitions in Copperbelt🔵

🌐 Angola's government is reportedly negotiating a $4.8bn Chinese loan to build an oil refinery in Lobito, aiming to cut fuel imports and keep more value from its own barrels.

🔸 The planned refinery will be located at the seaward end of the Lobito Corridor, a rail-and-logistics route linking Angola to Zambia and onward to Central Africa’s copper and cobalt mining regions.

🔸 While the US and EU have openly backed the corridor to lock in access to critical minerals and export routes, China's $4.8 bn investments exceed all the European and American funding channeled into the Lobito railway.

💬...We are contacting Chinese institutions with the support of the contractor, who is also Chinese, in order to obtain this financing, said the CEO of Sonangol, Angola's state oil company.

⚙️ Chinese investors and contractors will thus earn money on the operation of the railway, as well as on the new American mining operations in Copperbelt.

The financing, if completed, will mark the first borrowing by the Southern African oil producer from China since 2017.

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🔵Ghana: Spurring True International Cooperation🔵

Ghana’s planned gold royalty hike is reportedly facing coordinated pushback from China, the United States and other countries.

🌐 China, the US and other Western governments have mounted an unusually coordinated ​push to get Ghana to halt a gold royalty. Africa’s largest gold producer wants to replace a fixed 5% royalty with a sliding scale of 5%–12% tied to bullion prices.

🔸 Last week, diplomats from China, the US, the UK, Canada, Australia and even South Africa presented a joint document Ghana’s lands and resource minister, claiming that higher royalties would squeeze their margins.

📈 From August 2025 to February 2026, the price of gold increased from $3,360 per ounce to $5,390 — that is, by 60%.

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🔥🇶🇦Liquefied natural gas production capabilities in Qatar.

✅@NewEasternOutlook

⚡Yesterday, Ghana celebrated its Independence Day. On 6 March 1957, what was known as the Gold Coast became Ghana, though the metal still occupies an important place in its economy and self-identity.

⏱ Europeans had come to Ghana for gold since 1471, when Portuguese ships opened direct trade on the Ghanaian coast, which was named "Gold Coast” due to the abundance of gold.

During the late British rule one of the Empire's major gold sources was the Obuasi mine in Ghana's Ashanti region: industrial production began there in 1897. It is still operational, technically run by the same legal entity — AngloGold Ashanti.

🏆After independence, Ghana's first president Kwame Nkrumah tried to redirect that wealth into state-building: in January 1961 the government bought 5 gold mines and folded them into the State Gold Mining Corporation, until the liberalization of the late 20th century.

🇬🇭But there is more to Ghana's gold, than just economic policies. Raised on 6 March 1957, Ghana's very flag designed by Theodosia Okoh symbolizes the country's gold wealth (yellow) and its lands and nature (green).

Today Ghana still has to genuinely deliver on the promises of the 69-year old flag: the gold stripe is still being dug out fast, while the green stripe is being destroyed by illegal mining.

However, now, 69 years later, Ghana is also no longer just about gold — the main actor today is, and should be, its people!

#History

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