An Oct. 20 BusinessDay column by Dr Hani Okoroafor puts the location of industrial activity at the center of a discussion about African minerals, beginning with the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
Okoroafor's opening refers to the DRC's mineral deposits and to Chinese factories. The column frames a distinction between possessing mineral resources and having industrial capacity.
South Africa offers a related example through its effort to retain more value from the minerals it mines. The country's president has said it historically exported minerals for processing elsewhere. He welcomed Vedanta Limited's ambition to build a zinc smelter in the Northern Cape.
Vedanta said in an Oct. 18 stock exchange filing that the second phase of its Gamsberg expansion doubled annual zinc-in-concentrate capacity at its South African operations to about 500,000 metric tons. That figure measures capacity, not zinc already produced. South Africa's president said commercially viable electricity and reliable infrastructure would be needed for the smelter.
