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As the mining community continues to power Botswana’s economy amid high calls that the economy should diversify from mining especially diamonds, principals within the government circles still believe more can be harvested before the non-renewable resources goes extinct.
With a mineral baseline boosting of diamond, base metals, coal, soda ash and salt, Mines Director Abi Kgomotso says other mining business enterprises not aligned to diamond will soon prop up mining with the possibility of further expansion in terms of coal and base metals.
“We are looking at five years or so, some of these will come into being,” said Kgomotso mentioning companies such as Discovery Metal and Aviva on his list of those expected to kickoff production soon.
Citing the recent campaign by government to lure potential miners to explore coal which is estimated to be sitting at around 212 billion tonnes of unexplored coal Abi said there is now a lot of prospecting interest on coal than before.
“There after, a lot of people came in and started getting prospecting license, for us it’s a success we have generated the necessary interest. People are on the ground.”
He said over 200 prospecting licenses have been issued for coal explorations and some of the potential investors have started to explore for the economic value of the deposit before going into mining.
Quizzed on how his department is ensuring for a much balanced ecology as more and more mines are set to open in the country at the dawn of a coal era seemly growing fast to replace diamond mines mostly stimulated by Jwaneng mine which is actually the main source of government revenue over the years making it a critical mine to the economy of Botswana. Abi was optimistic that natural balance in mining community remains intact.
“Miners in this country are aware that before developing a mine one has to do a Social Environmental Impact Assessment (SEIA), in that, always the ecological aspects are addressed, part of that process is consulting with the communities and regulators,” said Abi adding that the process is driven by the Department of Environmental Affairs.
He further said to guard against non-adherence in environmental activities both Ministry of Minerals, Energy and water Resources and ministry of Environment, Wildlife and Tourism have officers who are environmental specialist.
“If they are any deviations they have authority to bring the mines to book and make them comply.”
On uranium mining which has ignited a lot of sensitive debate as to the safety of communities when the mining take place Abi assured the nation those strategies will be put in place to avoid negative environmental impact.
“We are not tech- knowledgeable but we have a department of radiation protection, we have started even to engage the Common Wealth so that we can design regulation around uranium mining,” said Abi.
He said before mining every project will be subjected a full SEIA. Abi further said his department will benchmark from countries like Namibia that have a long history of uranium mining and Malawi who started her uranium mining this year.
Though Abi sounds very passionate about the country’s mining industry, he is still very acquainted with the fact that minerals are not forever.
“No I do know think mineral are not a renewable resource sooner or later they will run out that is why as Botswana we are focused on developing other mining activities such as coal,” he emphasized.
“We realize that at some point diamond mining will come to an end, which is why is even have a diamond hub, the diamond hub is to say let’s have those business such as cutting and polishing, so that when our own diamond run out we still have the downstream part of it so that, we can get the input from other countries.
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March 2nd, 2010 at 8:53 pm