Mining Indaba preview
Africa is thriving with opportunity, as long as
you are prepared to be open minded, creative,
and flexible in the way you conduct business.
The mining industry is certainly picking up.
Exploration spend is on the rise and projects
that were put on hold have secured funding
to take their projects forward. showing that they are suitably qualified
in these areas, but because of limited
employment opportunities, these individuals
are no longer ‘job ready’. The youth or school
leavers are the ones who are not getting the
opportunity to gain skills that can make
them marketable and employable.
The real challenge in Africa, in my view,
is the shortage of human resources. Africa
has many highly qualified professionals
and a large contingent of unskilled labour.
The shortage lies in-between; that is, skilled
engineering labour and lower to mid-
management or supervisory skills. I have
seen many individuals with certificates It is important to find ways to
engage communities, authorities, and
stakeholders, whereby one can start
generating a pool of resources during a
mining feasibility study, for example. This
will provide a pool of resources ready for
the project execution and construction
phases. One company that is taking the
Breton Scott: head of projects and business development at ATI,
and managing director of Bowline
Breton Scott.
lead in this area is the Artisan Training
Institute, who is actively developing their
modular training solutions where they
are ‘taking training to the learners’, rather
than ‘taking the learners to the training’.
Corruption remains a significant
challenge in Africa, especially in
politically volatile areas. This problem is
often facilitated by a lack of transparency
in the processes relating to exploration
and mining rights — which can often
put off investors whose shareholders
and other stakeholders demand high
standards of reporting, compliance, and
risk management.
West Africa seems to be an exciting prospect,
though. Many of West Africa’s mining
countries have shown improved risk ratings
— including Senegal, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire,
Mali, Burkina Faso, Nigeria — and we have
seen some interest from both governments
and investors in these countries. Our
approach as a company is to support our
clients wherever they go, and we expect to
remain involved with them in this region and
others. Some of our most innovative recent
work has been with governments in West
Africa who are looking to improve their
attractiveness to investors.
While the performance of South Africa’s
mining sector has been disappointing in
recent years, there is renewed optimism
going forward due to better relationships
being built between the industry and
government. The DRC was particularly
32 AFRICAN MINING JANUARY - FEBRUARY 2019
William Joughin: chairman and principal mining geotechnical engineer, SRK Consulting
William Joughin.
disappointing, with changes to the
mining code and subsequent investor
unhappiness; Zimbabwe has improved,
but cashflow is a problem. b
www.africanmining.co.za