Mining ZimbabweLatest Mining News, Policy and Industry Updates

B2Gold Corporation, the Canadian company that owns mines in Africa and the Philippines, is interested in acquiring gold assets in Zimbabwe.

The mid-tier gold producer, which has mines in Mali, Namibia and the Philippines, has held talks with the government and other officials Zimbabwe “to see if they are ready for us to come in,” said Clive Johnson, chief executive officer of the Vancouver-based company.

“There is really a strong case and we are making that case in Zimbabwe,” Johnson said in an interview. “We are looking at it as intriguing potential with some advanced projects as well as exploration potential.”

B2Gold considered buying Metallon Corporation’s Shamva gold mine two years ago, but wanted authorities to exempt it from a law that forces miners to sell all the metal to a unit of the country’s central bank.

Zimbabwe desperately needs fresh investment in its key mining sector to reboot a struggling economy. Still, forcing gold miners to sell the bulk of their bullion to the central bank unit, Fidelity Printers and Refiners, which then pays them back partly in dollars and partly in local currency, is unnerving to new investors.

Winston Chitando, the mines minister, said that B2Gold has shown interest in investing and is holding talks with privately-owned gold mining companies.

B2Gold would consider buying operating assets in Zimbabwe and also enter into joint ventures and the company could also explore the potential for establishing a milling plant, the CEO said. The miner is also searching for gold in Finland, Uzbekistan and is seeking to build a new mine at the Gramalote project in Colombia with AngloGold Ashanti Ltd.

Zimbabwe’s output of the precious metal, which the nation relies on for most of its foreign-exchange earnings, is forecast to rise 12% to 28 tons this year, Fidelity Printers said. The government has previously projected gold production to increase to 100 tons by 2023.

“It’s an interesting area for us geologically and that’s what we looking for in the world,” said Johnson, who has led the company since it was founded in 2007. “We will probably enter the first part of next year a bit more confident to talk more about what we see there as the potential.”

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Bloomberg

Invictus Energy Limited, the Australian firm that is exploring for oil and gas reserves in Muzarabani district, has started trading on the OTCQB market, as part of efforts to raise funding for the project, the firm said in a statement.

The OTCQB is a mid-tier equity market which lists primarily early-stage and developing companies in the United States (US) and international markets.

The company will trade on the OTCQB market under the ticker IVCTF.

“Invictus Energy Limited is pleased to announce that it has qualified to onboard to the OTCQB market maintained by OTC markets in New York,” the note read in part.

By upgrading to the OTCQB from the pink market, Invictus enabled its current and prospective US investors “improved market visibility, increased trading liquidity and the most up-to-date information otherwise not found on the pink market.”

Last month, the southern Africa-focused oil and gas exploration outfit said its Cabora Bassa 2021 seismic survey campaign in Zimbabwe was progressing well.

The data quality and density being acquired from the survey was excellent and a step change from the previous Mobil survey conducted in 1990, the company said.

“The HSE [health, safety and environment] performance has been exceptional, and the project has now exceeded
87 000 hours without a lost time injury. The seismic data QC [quality control] and processing has commenced and is ongoing,” it said.

Invictus has awarded Polaris Natural Resources Inc, Canada’s largest seismic company to provide acquisition services for its first seismic programme in the Cabora Bassa Basin.

The firm was tasked to conduct, process, and interpret a minimum of 400km of seismic data in order to refine the Mzarabani-1 drilling location and well path and identify additional prospectivity for the upcoming drilling campaign.

The portfolio consists of a highly prospective 250 000 acres within the Cabora Bassa Basin.

The Cabora Bassa Project encompasses the Muzarabani Prospect, which is potentially the largest, undrilled seismically-defined structure onshore Africa.

The prospect is defined by a robust dataset acquired by Mobil in the early 1990s that includes seismic, gravity, aeromagnetic and geochemical data.

The company is advancing the current exploration programme with the acquisition of infill seismic data for the planned first half of 2022 basin opening drilling campaign.

Newsday

SHURUGWI and many other towns across the country are blessed with an outstanding mineral endowment but the impacts of artisanal gold mining on the environment, health and education are as many as the components that incite it.

The artisanal miners have proved to be a social menace in communities around the country, causing environmental degradation as well as engaging in wars over mining claims and gold.

Their socially deviant behaviour stretches beyond the terror of machete wars to the use of money in the continued exploitation of the girlchild with 23 girls at Chironde Secondary School in Ward 19 in Shurugwi having dropped out of school after being impregnated by artisanal miners.

This situation is not peculiar to Chironde Secondary School or Shurugwi district alone but in all communities where artisanal gold mining is taking place.

This publication understands that although various campaigns have been carried out against child sexual abuse, the practice is still rampant and every year many girls are forced to drop 100% Online Masters in Education out of school after falling pregnant.

According to Zimbabwean laws, sexual intercourse with anyone below the age of 16 is a criminal offence, yet the majority of school girls who fell pregnant fall below the age of consent.

Last year, the Government amended the Education Act to allow pregnant girls back in class but reports indicate that a few girls were returning to school, as they have to assume motherly roles.

The Zimbabwe Statistical Agency (Zimstat) confirms that levels of child marriage remain unacceptably high in Zimbabwe.

According to the 2019 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICs), one in three (32.6 percent) girls were married before the age of 18.

Zimstat data also indicate the rural-urban divide in child marriages where rural girls are twice more likely to be married before the age of 18 than their urban counterparts.
According to World Vision International, under the Improving Gender Attitudes, Transition, and Education Outcomes (IGATE) initiative, the girls’ education is uniquely threatened.

School closures increase vulnerability to child marriage, early pregnancy, and gender-based violence – all of which decrease the likelihood of girls continuing their education.

In Shurugwi district, artisanal miners both young and old make sure that when they hit a “score”, (mining lingo for getting gold) they go back to the townships or business centres such as Chironde where they dangle wads of United States dollars to their peers and obviously the intention will be to lure the school going young girls.

Last week, the Zimbabwe Gender Commission (ZGC) held a district community dialogue outreach programme at Chironde business centre where young girls, women and men all blamed the increase in artisanal gold mining to the surge in teenage pregnancies, early marriages and GBV.

A teenage girl (name withdrawn to protect her) said she didn’t have money to pay her school and examination fees following the death of her parents forcing her to look for an artisanal gold miner to support her.

“From the first term he paid my school fees and then my examination fees and that was after the death of my parents. We were doing good until I fell pregnant in June. All hell broke loose and I had to drop out of Chironde Secondary School. I am not the only one, we are many and we are suffering because of these artisanal gold miners,” she said.

Miss Kudzaishe Watch from the department of Social Welfare in Shurugwi told the meeting that child marriages, teenage pregnancies were rife in the district.
“Child marriages and teenage pregnancies are all rife in this Ward 19 and Gutsaruzhinji village from pupils in Grade 7 to A Level. You find a 10-year-old girl in a relationship with a 17-yearold boy or a 17-year-old girl going out with a 50-year-old guy. Most child marriages are not being reported. Twenty-three girls dropped out of Chironde Secondary School after falling pregnant mostly to artisanal gold miners,” she said.

Chief Nhema said poverty, peer pressure, Covid-19, and artisanal gold mining were all contributing to teenage pregnancies in his area.

“Poverty makes the children enter into relationships with these artisanal gold miners as they look for money for food and other things. For some, its peer pressure. Shurugwi is blessed with an outstanding mineral endowment and there is a surge in artisanal gold miners. Young boys drop out of school to go into gold panning. They come back to the villages dangling United States dollars and the girls because of poverty and peer pressure fall for them and get
pregnant, enter into child marriages and are victims of domestic violence,” he said.

A villager, Mrs Maria Nyoni said there should be an educational policy that will see a smooth transition from pregnancy into motherhood and schooling.

She said without policies, teachers will continue to be hesitant towards teenage pregnancies, viewing it as none of their business but rather the children’s problem.

“There is a need for training of teachers, sensitising them to make changes in their perceptions in view of the current trends and to accept pregnant children wholeheartedly.

There is a need to facilitate their re-entry into school after delivery because right now they are failing to go back to school because no-one from teachers to society accepts them. How can a teacher accept the pregnant pupil when her own family or her own parents have chucked her away?” asked Mrs Nyoni.

ZGC chairperson commissioner Margret Sangarwe said addressing child marriage was central to the work of the commission as it was one of the systemic barriers prejudicial to the achievement of gender equality in the county.

Child marriage she said impedes the full enjoyment of rights, it limits girls from accessing educational and economic opportunities that could lift them and their families out of poverty.

“Further, child marriage exposes the “brides” and their new-born babies to high health and death risks due to physiological immaturity. Over and above these effects, child marriage increases the risk of domestic violence and compromises one’s ability to exercise choice regarding sexual and reproductive health rights,” she said.

Commissioner Sangarwe said the community dialogue was coming at the backdrop of a significant rise in cases of child marriage in Zimbabwe.

“A case in point is the case of Anna Machaya, a 14-year-old girl who died whilst giving birth at an Apostolic shrine in Marange, Manicaland Province. The Anna Machaya case is only a representation of many other cases going unreported,” she said.

“Furthermore, it is worrisome to note that the situation has been further heightened by the Covid-19 pandemic and other humanitarian situations. During the lockdown period we have witnessed cases of child marriage escalating, a lot of young girls fell pregnant and were married off before the age of 18.”

The Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education communication and advocacy director, Mr Taungana Ndoro said the Government amended its Education Act, making it illegal for schools to expel students due to pregnancy.

The Chronicle

Deaths in South Africa mines, which include the world’s deepest gold and platinum operations, rose for a second consecutive year as worker safety deteriorated.

The toll so far in 2021 was 69, up from 48 a year-earlier, the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy said in a statement Monday.

In 2019, 51 people died over the whole year, the lowest number of fatalities on record, before climbing to 60 last year.

Miners are looking to improve safety practices to address the falls of ground and transport-related accidents that were the leading causes of death as the sector, the ministry said in the statement, which was jointly issued with the Minerals Council South Africa.

The industry, which employs more than 450 000 people and accounts for about 8 percent of the economy, has previously seen declining fatalities over several decades.

“This is the second consecutive year of regression in fatalities and the industry’s stakeholders have committed to urgently address the unacceptable situation,” they said.

Sibanye Stillwater Ltd said on Friday that four workers died in two separate incidents at its platinum and gold mines, raising the 2021 death toll at its operations to 18.

Rival miner Impala Platinum Holdings Ltd also reported four fatalities in recent days after two incidents at its mines in Rustenburg.

ZIMBABWE has urged Western Countries to float a lucrative financial rescue package which will serve as a safety net for poor countries expected to stop coal usage.

Signatories to the Cop26 agreement, which Zimbabwe is a part of, have committed to ending all investment in new coal power generation domestically and internationally.

They have also agreed to phase out coal power in the 2030s for major economies, and the 2040s for poorer nations.

Speaking to NewZimbabwe.com on the sidelines of the Skills for Energy in Southern Africa (SESA) networking event organised by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) recently, Labour ministry’s chief director, Clifford Matorera said the developed countries must actively support poor nations.

He said the West should really come up with a package which is not tight bearing in mind that they developed using by-products which came from fossil fuels originating from Hwange like coal.

“They have reached these successful levels which they are at today and African countries are also trying to rise up to that level and they are now saying if you don’t do this then they are sanctions to do with failure to comply with energy production,” Matorera said.

“My argument is that we need a concerted effort from all regional and continental blocs to press the West to come up with a rescue package that can then be used as a rescue package if they want us to stop using coal. We cannot just wake up and say we can’t produce coal because of these developments. Yet the greatest enemies to ozone destruction are the first world countries,” he said.

Also speaking at the occasion, ILO’s Southern Africa, chief technical advisor in the SESA project, Lloyd Ngo said by the close of the project, it is expected that a total of 1617 engineers, technologists and technicians will be trained within the region contributing towards reduction of skills deficit.

“The Capacity of Kafue Gorge Regional Training Centre (KGRTC) will be enhanced to become a sustainable center of excellence in provision of skills training in renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies for the energy sector in the region,” he said.

The US$3,8 million project partnership agreement will be executed over a three- and half-year period and will be implemented by the Kafue Gorge Regional Training Centre (KGRTC).

It is a build up to the just-ended Skills Development for the Renewable Energy Sector (SkiDRES) pilot Project implemented from April 2019 to October 2020, whose objective was to test and prepare for further skills development for the Renewable Energy (RE) and Energy Efficiency (EE) sector.

“The project will be implemented from January 2021 to June 2024. The key implementing partner is Kafue Gorge Regional Training Centre. More details on KGRTC will be presented,” added Ngo.

New Zimbabwe

A CHINESE owned mining company Xu Zhong Jin Investments has been dragged to court by the family of a local artisanal miner it allegedly buried alive in one of its shafts in Mutare last year.

The miner, Sure Mutamba’s widow, Nester Munyongani, and her four-year-old child are demanding $2 million from the Chinese company as compensation for causing the death of husband and father and for loss of support.

The Chinese operate a mine on the banks of Mutare River, Premier Estate, despite the extraction of alluvial gold ore from riverbeds, banks and wetlands having been outlawed in 2014.

According to the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR), who are representing Munyongani and her child, Xu Zhong Jin Investments was warned there were two people in a pit it intended to fill up but still proceeded against that advise, resulting in Mutamba and his colleague Vincent Gundo being buried alive.

Their bodies were retrieved three days later following massive protests by neighbouring communities.

“Xu Zhong Jin Investments, a Chinese mining company is standing trial after being sued for damages by the widow and child of Sure Mutamba, an artisanal miner, who was buried alive in November 2020 as the Chinese miner was rehabilitating a mining site at Premier Estate in Old Mutare in Manicaland province,” ZLHR said.

“The widow, Nester Munyongani and her four-year-old minor child are suing Xu Zhong Jin Investments for $2 million for negligently causing the death of Mutamba and for loss of support emanating from his death. Mutamba’s body was only exhumed three days after he died following protests by community members over the inhumane operations of the Chinese miner. The Chinese miner had been advised that Mutamba was underground before its employees even closed the deep pit but they proceeded and closed the pit,” the lawyers said.

Chinese mining companies in the country have been roundly accused of perpetrating human rights abuses.

(New Zimbabwe)

South African state power utility Eskom sees an opportunity to emerge from years of crisis by shifting from coal-fired power generation towards natural gas and renewables, its chief executive has said.

Eskom has implemented power cuts for more than a decade in Africa’s most industrialised nation that have held back economic growth and deterred investment. It has roughly R400 billion (US$25 billion) of debt that it services through regular government bailouts.

“From the crisis that Eskom currently finds itself in — very poor plant performance, excessive debt — this contains the opportunity for us to really act as the foundation for a new dispensation in South Africa,” CEO Andre de Ruyter told the Reuters Next conference.

“Hopefully we can persuade people to come and set up factories here, to build components for renewable energy, that will create jobs that will create demand for electricity which will turn this challenge that we have got at the moment from a vicious downward cycle into a virtuous upward cycle,” he added.

Eskom operates 15 coal-fired power stations that generate more than 80 percent of the country’s electricity but regularly break down. It also runs Africa’s only nuclear power station and a handful of smaller pumped storage, hydroelectric, backup gas plants and a wind farm.

But it is due to shut down about 22 000 megawatts (MW) of coal plants that are reaching the end of their life by 2035, close to half its 46 000 MW of nominal capacity now.

The plan is to replace some of that with gas and renewables, and allow independent power producers to make up the shortfall.

The plan to move decisively away from coal has prompted criticism from Mines and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe, a powerful figure in the governing African National Congress and former trade union leader, who in August likened it to “economic suicide”.

De Ruyter said Eskom had identified two potential gas projects — one with a 3 000 MW capacity at Richards Bay and another 1 000 MW one at its retiring Komati coal plant. By 2050,

Eskom hopes to achieve “net zero” carbon emissions through offset initiatives.

De Ruyter, who took the helm of Eskom in January 2020, said Eskom hoped to get the “lion’s share” of the US$8,5 billion of financing that South Africa secured from Western countries in a deal announced at the COP26 climate conference in November.

It will prioritise spending that money on building transmission infrastructure to connect to the best solar and wind acreage in the country, as well as strengthening the distribution grid to accommodate more private generation.

Eskom has been trying to lift the performance of its coal fleet through deep maintenance, but that has yet to yield results. Reflecting the gravity of the situation, De Ruyter said it could take another three to four years to see a significant change in the energy availability factor of the coal units still in operation.

Reuters

BINDURA Nickel Corporation (BNC) says the 40% export retention and the depreciating Zimbabwe dollar triggered a loss of US$1,2 million during the half year ended September 30, 2021.

Under the export retention scheme, companies are required by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) to surrender 40% of their proceeds for local currency at the official exchange rate.

But companies say the policy has been exerting a huge burden on their operations.

“For the six months to September 2021, the Zimbabwe dollar auction rate devalued by just under 4%, while the Zimbabwe dollar exchange rate on the parallel market, which local suppliers use in their pricing models, devalued by approximately 50%.

“The combination of compulsory surrender of 40% of revenue and the discrepancy between the auction and parallel market rates, resulted in an estimated loss to the company of US$1,2 million for the six months.”

While the Zimbabwean economy is projected to grow by between 5% and 7% this year, underpinned by a successful 2020/21 agricultural season and high commodity prices, COVID-19 and foreign currency distortions have remained a major challenge.

“The threat of a resurgence of COVID-19, persistent foreign currency shortages, the widening gap between the auction and unofficial exchange rates as well as the potential of an increase in the already high inflation rate will pose serious threats to continued growth and economic stability,” Masunda said.

“The operating environment for the remainder of the current financial year is, therefore, expected to remain challenging.”

The loss in BNC’s earnings come despite a near 71% increase in profit-after-tax to US$5,84 million in the period under review, from a 2020 comparative of US$3,42 million, owing to improved nickel prices.

The improved nickel prices saw BNC revenue increase by 41% to US$35,3 million in the half year, from US$25 million in the 2020 comparative.

“The average nickel price of US$18 234 per tonne was 38% higher than the previous year’s price of US$13 214 per tonne, reflecting the global increase in nickel prices,” Masunda said.

During the period under review, nickel in concentrate production was 2 553 tonnes, 13% lower than 2 929 tonnes produced in the same period last year.

The decline was mainly due to the head grade of 1,26%, which was 22% lower than for the six months to September 2020.

However, tonnes of ore milled was 241 325 which BNC recorded as 15% higher than the 209 153 tonnes of ore milled in the same period last year as the mine initiated the transition from the high grade, low-volume strategy to a new low-grade, high-volume strategy.

“In making the transition to the new mining strategy, the business is also continuing with its capital expenditure/re-investment programme, with specific emphasis on replacing the dilapidated and obsolete underground mining mobile equipment,” Masunda said.

NewsDay