He was speaking as a guest on CRTV’s fortnight magazine programme, Inside The Presidency, aired Monday September 18.
Prof Fuh Calistus, who is also a seasoned expert in mining, disclosed that equipment for the start of the Kribi mining project will begin arriving the country in October. He also noted that firm technical and administrative decisions have been taken to put order in the artisanal mining sector.
Meanwhile, he also announced that a project has een initiated to restore previously abandoned mining sites into farmlands.
Talking on the quarry sector, he justified a recent extraction tax levied on quarry operators. He also stated that government is working hard to fulfil all the conditions needed for validation by the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, EITI, in October and also reiterated measures that have been taken to stamp out the proliferation of sachet whiskies.
Excerpts
It is about nine months since you were appointed as Acting Minister of Mines, Industry and Technological Development. How has it been in the last nine months, Mr Minister?
Prof. Fuh Calistus Gentry: I have been trying to continue the roadmap of the ministry and also follow the prescriptions of the Head of State about the major projects that we envisage to
start this year.
What is the balance sheet or the signboard of
Cameroon’s solid hydrocarbons, what they call the solid minerals which can be used to boost the economy?
Prof. Fuh Calistus Gentry: We basically have identified twelve major projects which, in terms of reserves, we can classify as future mines. They are divided again into short-term, mediumterm and long-term.
In the short-term domain, we have the three projects which the Head of State mentioned. To this, we add the gold project, which is in the East Region, then we have brought in the Geovic project. After some readjustments, it has become a short term project.
These projects, technically speaking, are to start
within a year from now with three of them set to start this year. These medium-term projects are estimated to start within two years. We also have two Iron Ore projects, the Rutile project in Akonolinga, another iron ore project in Eseka and then we have another gold project.
Long-term projects are projects that will start in
three years or more from now. For these, we have the bauxite project in Minim Martap and the gold project in the North, where reserves are already defined.
May I emphasise that we have more than one hundred and fifty exploration licenses, which means people are searching at different levels. Therefore, amongst these, we have several indices. We have metals, lithium, transition elements, and also indices of copper and zinc.
It is a very huge potential. The World Bank did us a lot of good. These indices are available for further investigation.
In other countries, we hear of uranium. What minerals do we have? Do we have manganese, the others
you have talked about and what are they used for?
Prof. Fuh Calistus Gentry: Yes, talking of uranium, we have indices of uranium in the North, but they have not been developed to full
reserve levels. Like you rightly said, we need it to develop power plants which can be used for diverse use, for electricity, for nuclear reactors etc. Bauxite is used to produce aluminium. Iron ore is the backbone of every industrialised nation. Iron ore is refined into steels of different types. Now the transition elements like manganese, which you cited, are many other elements in the transition group and used to refine different types of steels. That means the steel that is used for construction is not the very steel that is used in making cars. So, each strength of steel is defined by different elements in the transition group of elements on the periodic table.
Those elements are very important to define the type of steel that we produce. As for Titanium, it is very light metal. It is used for making Aeroplanes because it is light. The rare elements are very important because they are used a lot in electronics and they are very well sought after today. Lithium is in the same group, which
is used for making electronics. Copper and nickel are very essential.
I will like to let you know that presently, most of the copper nickel in the world comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo. But it comes out as a by-product of copper. Taking into consideration the instability in DR Congo, we have an alternative where the copper in Cameroon is a direct product; it is not a derivative of copper and it is found on surface. This is the key element in the energy transition in the world, which is used in making car batteries. So, it is a huge potential that we’ve got. The kind of deposit we have is very unique.
The list goes on and on. Of course, I don’t need to tell you what gold is used for.
From what you are saying, Cameroon has enormous potentials. But when are we going to move from a country of potentials to a country that produces?
Prof. Fuh Calistus Gentry: The target is this year. The President of the Republic announced that they are three projects; three iron ore
projects that we are going to start. We deliberated at the beginning of February and to this three, we added two others, making five projects that we listed as shortterm. I can tell you without any contradiction that three
of these projects are set to take off.
The Head of State on December 31, 2022, mentioned three projects; two of them I just cited. I would like us to begin with the first two which are in the South region. Mr Minister, where are we today nine months since President Paul Biya mentioned these projects?
Prof. Fuh Calistus Gentry: Alot has been done I can assure you. We were in Kribi and put to rest all the challenges. There were seven challenges. The last challenge was about the land
titles which was a hindrance to the beginning of the operation of the project. To our delight, the Minister State Property, Surveys and Land Tenure, cancelled all the land titles which were about 129. We have the open pit mine, we have the infrastructure component, we have the treatment plant, we have actions to the community, we had issues with the port of
Kribi. All these issues have been addressed. If you were opportune, I would have showed you the map which shows the design of the open pit, which shows the mining form; two dimensional which has been elaborated into three dimensional forms.
As we speak, by the end of this month, or early
October, equipment will start arriving for the construction properly and for the treatment plant to start. As we speak, this month will see the deforestation of the area where mining will take place. We have written already
to the Minister of Forestry and Wildlife, asking for the right to allow the wood to be taken out, which will be given to the Ministry of Forestry.
Over in China, a company is already working to produce other components of the treatment plant and then the equipment that will actually do the surface activities to remove the forest and the rest. As I said, they will be arriving by the end of this month. Technically speaking,
I want to assure you that in October, I will be making a full communiquรฉ as to the fact that technically, these projects have started.
All the roads have been elaborated and are leading to the open pit mine. The design has already been contracted to SVN, which is a South African company. Again, the crushers are being built in China. When I will be making a press statement, all of these pictures will be shown and people will see the different technical aspects of the project. If I take the other project,
which is going to start this year, which is for Copper nickel, next week you will be seeing that we have cleared with the Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife and deforestation of the mining area of an initial area of 125 hectares.
I will be making a press statement with proofs, pictures, and diagrams. When these equipment will arrive, I will invite the press because the Director of Mines and my staff will go and receive all the equipment either in Kribi or Douala for people to see. As for us, we will define the technical starting of the project so that actions are carried out on the field.
To this effect, a team from the Ministry of Mines,
Industries and Technological Development, accompanied by economic operators, will be going to China, Canada and Brazil, to examine and see the progress of the construction of these equipment. We are talking of the technical start of the project. As to the rest, when we are effectively started, it is up to the hierarchy to determine if they want a ceremonial event to cap the event.
But for us, in October we will consider that these
projects have technically started. We are giving full evidence to Cameroonians to see the state of advancement in the different sites.
Mr. Minister, there is a problem with artisanal mining, especially in the East Region in terms of the security in the area. Mines are abandoned. It’s a big issue. From the reports we have, between 2012 and 2022, about 202 persons died because of the haphazard nature of the terrain and the anarchical manner in which the mines were left by artisanal miners. What has your ministry been able to do to bring sanity in
that area?
Prof. Fuh Calistus Gentry: We took very, very firm technical and administrative decisions to put an end to this practice and to bring order into the sector. We started with a circular which
was signed, giving people about two months to comply.
Henceforth, every company operating mechanised equipment must have a plan to restore the environment while working. It is not about finishing. While you are working, you restore and pull back in a way that even
farming can take place.
Secondly, you must choose a social project; either in.the electricity sector, education sector…
But they have not been doing so. That is what we have implemented. I will come back to that. When you choose among these five sectors, you
present your project in alignment with the mayor of the area who accepts and then sends the document to us, which we compile and those documents are sent to the Presidency.
Any company that does not comply with regulations will be closed.
In order to follow up with that, we did invite all the companies involved in this sector. I think it was on September 6, here in Yaounde, with all the mayors and their representatives. We brought out the statistical formula where every mayor, together with our services, will make an inventory of every mining activity in his
or her area of jurisdiction.
These mayors are the ones to choose the projects and every activity will be subject to collaboration with our services in control.
That meeting has started yielding fruits. Again, there would be a team led by the Secretary General of my ministry to the East Region, who will make sure that all areas that are not abiding by this, they will reinforce the closure.
After their mission, the Inspector General of this
ministry will further go to the field to see that all the norms have been respected. We would have an exact number of companies complying, those that have been shut down and we factor them. If we shut down a company, we would be able, after three months, to withdraw its license and hand it over to the national mining company to carry out the activity.
We are firm and I think there is a very firm revolution going on on the ground. Very soon, we would see hundreds of projects that are at the benefit of the population concerned in these areas.
There is also another problem. I know you are not the Minister of Education but we have realised that in some areas like in Batouri, there are children of school-going age who abandon classes and go to the gold mines. What can you do to stop this phenomenon, which is distracting children from going to school?
Prof. Fuh Calistus Gentry: The first thing is that one of the key areas where we have asked companies to implement is offering school
infrastructure and offering didactic materials. We have also asked them to offer scholarships, making going back-to-school an obligation.
Our long-term objective is to phase out this type of mining. That is why the mission that is going to the zone would be looking at modern methods, which would not allow people to be digging and washing gold on the surface, but will work in a closed system. That is the system practiced already in Brazil and other countries.
When this is done, these children would find jobs in mini-industrialised consigns when they have the right qualifications. There would be no space for people to go around digging most of the mine site, which do not give them any concrete results.
We have also taken a very good stance-reconsulting companies. This means we are going back to those areas that are abandoned and also seeking international finance to restore all those areas.In fact, we are working with the Ministry of State Property, Surveys and Land Tenure, MINDCAF, where those areas will be given and restored, so that they host a new project in agro-industry to render the mine site to farmlands. The produce will be industrialised so that what was looking like a curse, is turned into investment.
Our aim is that every piece of land in the East,
Adamawa and the concerned areas would be restored to their fullness and will be in a better state. This is because we even envisage making the soil better for farming. Such is the project we have done.
In the immediate term, actions are being taken. In the medium-term, there is going to be a transition to mining in the closed systems. Most of what they get, they don’t ever recover up to 40% of the gold. So, it’s a loss for both the State and the operators. When we would move to these modern systems, we are going to
realise almost 60 or 70% of the gold recovered from the material that has been abandoned.
I think we have a short-term prospect, which are the actions we are taking. A medium-term prospect is to migrate to a more systematic and modern way of implementation and a long-term prospect is about the fact that mini-industrial mines and many of these projects will develop a full scale industrial mine, which is going to lay to rest the problem of harzard mining.
To be Continued.....
Culled from The Guardian Post
News Breaks Out, We Break In. (The 2014 Bloggies Finalist)
