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Mining
Africa - Home to world’s most wanted minerals
Generally speaking there is virtually no mineral that Africa does not have in exploitable quantities but the continent tends to follow its economic nose and root out those that are the money-making flavours of the day. Tom Nevin digs out the story.
Strategically, energy-generating coal and uranium will be Africa’s most important minerals in the decade ahead, followed by gold for the sheer flow of revenue it is generating. Right now we live in a world that turns on electrical power, and one that is building a seemingly unquenchable thirst for the means to spin turbines. And Africa has more of energy generation’s wherewithal than anywhere else.
Coal
The International Energy Agency (IEA) reports that world energy demand will grow by two thirds over the next 30 years with a third of that growth in China and India and coal, as the most abundant and affordable of all fossil fuels, will be used to meet the demand. As the most important fuel for electricity generation, it will have a major and vital role to play, along with other fossil fuels.
Coal prices reached a record high of $77.87 in July 2004. The following three years, coal prices saw a steady decline until they reached the same figure again in July 2007. From then, they improved, reaching an all-time high of $128.40 in November, an increase of 65% in only four months, according to Miningmix.com, an influential voice in the South African extraction industry.
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