Minister of Mines and Mineral Development Hon. Richard Musukwa has said that Government is confident that gold mining in Mwinilunga and other potential sites across the country will make a huge contribution to the country’s economy.
And United Kingdom based company Jubilee Metals Group Plc, has said there is real potential for the mining sector in Zambia especially gold and that investors in the United Kingdom needed to know about Zambia’s gold.
The Minister said this when he met United Kingdom companies which included Jubilee Metals Group, Spark Advisory Partners, Shard Capital, Spice and Capital Jcam Investment who expressed interest in investing in Zambia.
Hon. Musukwa said that Mwinilunga sits on an excess of a million tonnes reserve of Gold resource that is on the surface.
“We have gold reserves across several parts of Zambia, but the Mwinilunga one, is phenomenon because it has brought new tidings in terms of Zambia’s mineral resources and we strongly feel that once exploited, this is the resource that can make a huge contribution to gold reserves across the world. The resources that sits in North-western Province in Mwinilunga is so huge, our geological team has made a preliminary assessment, and we are sitting in excess of a million tonnes reserve in terms of gold and most of which is just on the surface.”
“We have already allowed Bank of Zambia to be buying all the gold around the country and we think that we should now use the gold as part of our import cover and build up in terms of reserves,” he said.
And Jubilee Metals Group Plc Non-Executive Chairman Colin Bird said in the near future, Zambia will be a significant contributor to the World’s gold supply.
“Zambia is blessed with enormous mineral wealth. I think the mining world has not heard about the gold in Zambia. In the North-western of Zambia, there is an emerging gold industry with tremendous surface gold discoveries. I understand that the indications are very good and Zambia in the near future will contribute to the world’s gold supply,” he said.
Mr. Bird said he was happy with Jubilee’s investment in Zambia where it had operations in Kabwe and said Zambia will be a significant player in the gold sector saying it is the country to invest in.
Meanwhile, Jubilee’s Chief Executive Officer Leon Coetzer said the company is converting the Zinc Refinery in Kabwe into a metal refinery which will expand its commodity basket to include Copper, Vanadium, Zinc and Lead.
“Zambia has a rich history of Copper mining and a huge amount of potential in the mining waste processing space. Having recently acquired the Sable refinery in Kabwe, the aim is to build Kabwe into a central processing facility for third party material in Zambia. Jubilee estimates there are 6.4million tonnes of surface tailings in the region surrounding Kabwe containing Zinc, Vanadium and Lead as well as Copper,” he said.
He said Copper cathode production will start in the first quarter of 2020 and Jubilee Metals Group PLC expects to produce the first copper from its Kabwe project early next year.
Mr. Coetzer said the initial production from the copper circuit is expected to be 250 tonnes of plated copper cathode metal per month, rising to 400 tpm.
“First Zinc and Vanadium products are scheduled for the second and third quarter of 2020 with the production of lead concentrate targeted for the fourth quarter. Kabwe will be Jubilee’s fifth tailings preprocessing operation with the group currently producing predominately chrome and platinum,” he said.
Jubilee Metals Group Plc is an industry leading metal recovery business focused on the retreatment and metals recovery from mine tailings, waste, slag, slurry and other secondary materials generated from mining operations.
Jubilee’s shares are traded on the AIM Market of the London Stock Exchange (JLP) and the South African Alt-X o
“We have already allowed Bank of Zambia to be buying all the gold around the country and we think that we should use gold as part of our import cover and build up in term asses of reserves,” said Mr. Musukwa.
Any currency is just a paper backed by its under lying assets i.e in our case its copper and now gold.Let there be transparency in the sale of these assets(copper, gold and other minerals) backing the Kwacha and our currency will be bouyant.The starting point is to bank all the proceeds from the sale of these assets with BOZ.In this way our Kwacha will inevitably be strengthened and the mining houses will still externalise profits via the BOZ unlike the current situation where GRZ does not know where its taxable mineral exports are sold.
Here we go again selling our mineral wealth to foreign multinationals. And PF cadres come on this blog and start claiming that PF are struggling because multinationals own the mines!
It just shows how dishonest these people are.
Lessons from Ghana
In the month of April, 2019, Ghana earned $1,391,020,000 in exports, led by gold, which represents 48.7% of Ghana’s total exports. Ghana’s top import origins are China, the United States, India, Belgium, Luxembourg and the United Kingdom.
There is no official data on how much (if any) revenue the Ghanaian government receives from Chinese mining companies.
China remains the largest producer of gold in the world, mining 440 metric tonnes in 2017. However, China’s gold production has decreased, because of what is suspected to be increased environmental regulations.
In global resource and energy politics, underdeveloped nations often bear the environmental costs of mining.
“The emergence of China as a global player challenges the pre-existing dominance of the OECD (The…
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… OECD (The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries and will continue to be a crucial force for global change in coming decades,” Dr Urban writes. “The implications of China’s rise will be most significant for low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), but the outcomes will also affect the understanding of the process of development.”
Gold mines built by Chinese investors have destroyed water bodies in the heart of Ghana, Africa’s second-largest gold producer. River pollution caused by digging up the surrounding land areas have led to deforestation, dying fish and undrinkable water. Some rivers have dried out completely, and deforestation has impoverished many local farmers.
Despite the massive environmental consequences, “many youth from remote…
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…, “many youth from remote villages have found work in the gold mines.” Many of these “youths” are children and teenagers.
“The Chinese mines are quite often a community’s biggest employer, but there is an environmental cost,” Aljazeera reported in 2016.
Local farmers hat the Ghanaian government allows the miners to do as they please.
When Ghana signed the 2013 Minamata Convention on Mercury at the UN General Assembly, the country aimed to minimize exposure of mercury to its population. Despite this, many small-scale mining operations continue to use mercury when mining gold.
Children and teenagers who work at these small-scale mining sites “handle the liquid metal with their bare hands.”
The metal also affects people who live near the sites “through drinking water and…
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… The metal also affects people who live near the sites “through drinking water and fish consumption.”
Likewise, “neurological disorders are associated with mercury poisoning, and it is particularly harmful to pregnant women.”
This is funny….you going all the way to UK to invite foreigners to come and destroy our natural resources…only PF bandits can do that….so we have gold reserves and we are still poor and cant afford electricity….so we have no Zambians who can invest into mining…shame on you PF bandit and Bandit President Lungu
A govt with an agenda of begging and chasing after foreigners for investment, you wonder why IDC was created. You have Gold but what’s stopping you digging it yourselves?
Stop, Stop, Stop!!! Let’s plan for this gold properly before investors come in. Please involve Zambian investors first before we sale our mines to foreigners again. If the foreigners try to arm-twist us again then leave the gold in the ground for now
Look for local investors as foreign investors will take all their funds externalised once they invest.We will
Continue in poverty like KCM case.
Kaboyi mindset! ‘Investors should know about gold’. How about saying ‘Zambians should know about gold in Zambia’. You think that others love you so much that they want to develop your country. When are you going to act like a sovereign nation? Only Zambians will develop Zambia!
Something that villagers can do in mwinilunga does not require investor from uk
Can Chinese or indians as uk investor to dig coal
If it is “just on the surface” why not invest ourselves before calling investors to take a big slice
We don’t have the capacity to extract the mineral then beneficiate it because we have not been empowered. If we were socialist we would have handed these responsibilities to the state but as a capitalist system the investors we are looking for will be foreigners from the successful capitalist countryies
@ Nkombo
And that is the reason why “capitalist” (LOL) Chinese state owned companies are biggest investors and tax evaders in Zambia?
Since the UK allows gay marriages and promotes equality for gay people, why are you begging from them to invest in your poor country which you have failed to manage yourselves? Do you know that majority of CEOs of those companies are gay and positively recruit gsy people? So you only hate gay people when it suits you or when they are your fellow African and are not giving you anything? This is the ignorance in Zambia under pf.
I do not know the dynamics involved in mining gold. But if at all Zambians are capable of investing in the gold mines i would suggest that an opportunity be given to our own nationals. However if the Zambians have no capacity to mine the gold profitably then foreign investment is the answer. WE NEED ALL STAKEHOLDERS to come on board; ie the Government ,Academia, Chambers of mines and Commerce, civil society, and the general citizenry. OTHERWISE the prospects are seemingly very good for MOTHER ZAMBIA.
And the cause of KCM can be used as example of investment protection?
Well, I will make a bet with anyone that this deal will not better the lives of the Zambian people. The English will pay the pf bribes and they will split the money
For sure , why are PF so entrenched in enabling foreigners to own Zambia’s minerals ???
All the money from that gold will be externalised.
PF should consider enabling Zambians to mine and own that gold
We only have our selves to blame. These morons will throw any garbage on us and we will just complain and they will continue reaping . Just do some simple due diligence on these so called investors and ask your self if these guys are up to any good. Why not start with putting up policy to protect our Gold and make sure it benefits US Zambians?
Why can’t Zambian government develop gold mines through ZCCM IH.
There is a big beneficial reason God Almighty put this Gold on the surface in Zambia. (Let’s learn to ask ourselves some critical questions before running to investors abroad)
This means extraction will be cheaper and our initial investment in mining the gold will be minimal. We can mine this gold ourselves and expand the mine at our own pace while owning 100% of it. We don’t need investors, for once let’s own a mine and control this resource.
Why do we keep making the same mistake of bringing foreigners to come and own the mines and subject Zambians ( would be mine employees) to extremely poor working conditions)?
Our friends (Chilean government) in Chile own the biggest open pit copper mine in the world.
*******
Why don’t we go…
make sure honorable you come with a potential investor for KCM, we have waited for so long may December bring good tidings for KCM.Good luck honorable Musukwa.
Sir with all due respect, why go all the way to foreign lands to have our gold exploited and we the owners remain with nothing simple answer to that is greed our Zambian minds only allow thieving and taking advantage of the poor let the local people of Mwinilunga benefit not this nonsense of people from other lands giving direction on how such things need to be managed that’s why we have chiefs in these areas and some educated people, Zambia needs to be a federal state to stop thieves from other regions stealing without shame its not tribalism, no but respect for the locals
The real gold of Zambia is it’s people! Another opportunity to have natural resources exploited must be of real value to the people, and that means investing any proceeds wisely to build capacity for having control in the end-to-end value chain. Let Zambia work towards selling the high value downstream products, not just the means for other richer countries to do so.
“Minister of Mines and Mineral Development Hon. Richard Musukwa has said that Government is confident that gold mining in Mwinilunga and other potential sites across the country will make a huge contribution to the country’s economy.”
Why? What contribution is copper making to the economy? Now that it has been privatized? What contributionis Vedanta making to the economy? KCM? All the miners who don’t report profits in Zambia?
More of the same will result in the same results. A quarter of a century of neoliberal economics have failed.