Africa

Charles Siwawa, CEO of the Botswana Chamber of Mines, discusses the positive changes he has witnessed within the mining industry, what motivates him and what the legacy he hopes to leave behind.

It was in 1986 that Stephan Roux, an experienced restaurant manager before becoming a serial entrepreneur, decided to go into the business of making ice cream. In fact within the space of five years he had founded two companies - the first was Cream Star based at Ga-Rankuwa to the west of Pretoria, the second Avondale with its HQ and manufacturing facility at Silverton on the east side of the city.

Perseus Mining is very much a team effort: an overnight success that was 25 years in the making, as one of its founders Mark Calderwood has described it. Calderwood, the current chairman Reg Gillard and exec director Colin Carson have been taking an active interest in the under-explored mineral deposits of West Africa for that long, but it was not until 2004 that, having secured a couple of gold bearing deposits in Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire and the Kyrgyz Republic that they formed a company and floated it on the ASX.

Les Gaz Industriels Limited (LGI) was originally incorporated as a private company in 1952, with 100 percent Mauritian equity and the core aim of producing oxygen and acetylene for metal cutting and welding purposes. Eleven years later a majority stake in the business was acquired by leading South African gas company African Oxygen Ltd (Afrox).

Namibia Diamond Trading Company (NDTC) was established in 2007, to sort, value and sell diamonds produced by Namdeb (the joint venture responsible for mining activities in Namibia) and more specifically to establish a viable downstream diamond cutting, polishing and jewellery design industry in Namibia.

Tarcon is a private Harare-based company with operations throughout southern Africa, active in Mozambique and Zambia as well as its home market in Zimbabwe. It employs over 800 people. Although the company formally began operations in its present form in 2001, its foundations go back to 1981 and Tarcon was the result of the merger of a number of earthmoving, plant hire and later, civil contracting companies.

The first several months of 2012 were optimistic times for the potash industry, with a recent acceleration in world demand for the product showing no initial signs of wavering. What we now know is that a number of combining factors in the latter half of 2012 would conspire to negatively impact upon the potash market.

Anyone with an eye on the travel industry will see that there has been a lot of activity around Air Mauritius in the last year and that it has begun to make ripples that will get it noticed even by its biggest competitors. The fact is that Air Mauritius is not simply a regional airline but one that flies each week to four continents and is punching way above its weight in the global industry.

“Over the course of the last 18 months,” explains Technical Support Service Manager for International Business Development, Feisal Aden Darar, “we have been focusing on local and international trends to materialise our core goals. We have improved our Internet transit solutions by deploying Level 3 PoP, a world class Tier 1 and Saudi Telecommunication Company’s POP, with strong presence in the Middle East. In addition we have upgraded our existing Telecom Italia Sparkle node in terms of capacity and diversity.

According to the most recent World Bank economic update published late in 2012, “Tanzania stands out as a model of sound economic performance with a growth rate of over six percent in 2011 and 2012.” Tanzania’s economic prospects look positive over the period for 2012-14, the report goes on to say, when its GDP is forecast to grow at a rate of 6.5 to 7 percent. In economic terms Tanzania was a rock of stability in 2011/12, recording solid growth and strengthened fiscal discipline despite increases in the rate of inflation.