Africa, the race for transition minerals replicates the worst extractivist model

A recent one relationship of the non-profit organization Global Witness, based in the UK and US, details how a new mining rush driven by demand for minerals to produce clean energy is risking reproducing the same model of extractivism that has impoverished African countries for centuries.The organization's investigation is based on some projects lithium extraction in Zimbabwe, Democratic Republic of Congo and Namibia:in all three extraction projects the dynamics of exploitation who have plundered African territories to this day, reproducing forms of extractive colonialism which again only has the materials that are extracted.

We hear more and more often about the need for energy transition as salvation from climate change and the environmental crisis;an energy transition based on "new materials", the so-called "rare earths", necessary for energy storage and for electric vehicles, but not only.In fact, rare earths are used for the increasingly faster process of digitalisation of services and for the war industry.Lithium, nickel, magnesium, cobalt:raw materials that companies and states try to grab, perpetuating the looting and intensive exploitation of the territories where they are found.It seems increasingly clear that moving from the extraction and consumption of fossil resources to the extraction and consumption of rare earths will not be the solution to environmental problems;on the contrary, the rhetoric of the energy transition risks legitimizing new environmental and social devastation in the name of an energy that is not clean.

The NGO Global Witness has been working since 1993 to break the links between the exploitation of natural resources, conflicts, poverty, corruption and human rights violations around the world.“Sheer mineral wealth has not always translated into development, particularly for communities living next to mines,” he declared the author of the report Colin Robertson, senior investigator of the organization.The team analyzed lithium mining projects – a mineral essential for the production of electric vehicle batteries and energy storage – in Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Namibia.The researchers highlighted the risk that future extractive activities "foster corruption, fail to develop local economies and harm citizens and the environment".A dynamic that is not new, especially in Africa.

In January this year, residents of Uis, in Western Namibia, they began to notice a daily convoy of trucks leaving an area they believed to be simply an artisanal mining site. Second activist Jimmy Areseb, large vehicles passed through the community on their way to the port of Walvis Bay, on the country's west coast.In reality, the trucks were exporting minerals, in a vast operation that residents knew little about.In March, the population took to the streets to protest against the activities of the Chinese mining company Xinfeng Investments, owner of the trucks and the entity extracting the resources, alleging that the company was conducting large-scale industrial mining without proper social approvals or licenses.

According to documents reviewed by Mongabay, a Namibian company, Long Fire Investments, owned by businessman January S.Likulano, bought 10 mining concessions for a total of approximately $160 to carry out small-scale mining activities in the region.Only Namibian citizens can apply for small-scale mining permits, which are much cheaper than industrial mining permits issued to foreign companies.The Global Witness report cited ties between Long Fire Investments and Tangshan Xinfeng HongKong Ltd., owner of Xinfeng Investments, as evidence that the Namibian company was a front for Tangshan Xinfeng.In an export request, Long Fire Investments requested permission to export 55,000 tons of lithium-rich ore, for a value of 32 million dollars, at Tangshan Xinfeng.This relationship allows the Chinese company to profit from a major lithium deposit for a fraction of its actual value, while sidestepping the need for a proper environmental impact assessment for industrial extraction and operating under mining permits. small-scale mining.Local communities and Namibian parliamentarians have also accused the company of harboring workers “apartheid conditions” and for failing to keep promises to build processing plants in Namibia.

In Zimbabwe, another activist, Farai Maguwu, director of the Center for Natural Resources Governance, has described a similar experience of exclusion and exploitation in the Bikita mine, defining it “typical extractivism”.In January 2022, Sinomine, a Chinese company, purchased Bikita Minerals, which operates the southern African nation's largest lithium mine.Following the takeover, the new owners increased production from 3,000 to around 10,000 tonnes per month, mainly for export to China and Japan, Reuters reported.“Communities witness the departure of trucks loaded with minerals every day, but there is no investment in public goods, in healthcare, education or supporting alternative livelihoods,” he said Maguwu.“Companies are just here to loot.There is no connection with the priorities of the communities in which they operate."
He described a situation in which companies consume and pollute the community's water resources.The costs of these actions are borne by communities at large, but when it comes to profits from mining, companies are primarily concerned with compensating their shareholders.

In the DRC, two foreign companies are vying for control of the vast Manono lithium deposit, which could become the largest lithium mine of Africa.The project has been mired in corruption allegations and legal challenges for more than five years.Australian society AVZ Minerals and the Chinese mining giant Zijin Mining Group Ltd they are both vying for control of the concession, with a state mining body, Cominière, involved in alleged suspicious relationships with both.Although the Manono mine has not yet produced any lithium ore, the Global Witness report states that the project may have generated approximately 28 million dollars for shell companies set up in tax havens, windfalls made through the sale of mineral rights purchased below market price from the government-controlled Cominière.Almost none of this money has reached the coffers of the DRC government or the communities living near the field.

Different countries and multinationals, but the same dynamics of devastation and exploitation: in fact, it is the extractivist model that needs to change, a political, economic and social system that produces enormous wealth for little and incalculable damage to the population and ecosystems.An unsustainable model, which in Africa also takes on the guise of foreign colonialism, even if colored green.

[by Monica Cillerai]