This quarter, we’ve been talking a lot about mining and its economic, cultural, and political impact in Namibia. Though diamond mining has been the mineral resource Namibia is most known for, Namibia has stakes in mining areas such as lithium, uranium, and copper. Mining consists of about 25% of the country’s economy and is also the largest sector it their economy.
The discovery of cobalt in Namibia, then, is really important to the country’s growing economy, but could also have broader implications on the international scale. An Australian company, Celsius Resources, discovered an abundance of the resource in 2017 and proposes cobalt mining operations in Namibia will be in effect by 2020 (alternative news sources report that traces of cobalt in Namibia were found in 2012, however). They reported that between March and October of last year, they found sediment that hosted copper-cobalt mineralization in more than 15 kilometers of mineable land— and there’s potential that such resources may expand even further than what they have found thus far.
In terms of international impact, cobalt mining is important to growing technological industries. As one of the main materials necessary for creating lithium ion batteries, cobalt has become under great demand because of the current trend toward battery-powered vehicles. The majority of cobalt comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which is risky in that the country is often affected by internal instability and revolution. As a result, companies like Celsius Resources have been tapping various African countries for cobalt resources to act as safer and more reliable alternatives. Further, involvement in more expansive raw material mining companies is a benefit to the Namibian government; they collect a 3% levy on base metal market prices.
The cobalt project, as executed by Celsius Resources, is referred to as “Opuwo Cobalt” because of its location. The company reports that the area is “mining friendly, politically stable and [at a] safe location with excellent infrastructure.” Though the materials were found south of the Angola border, Reuters reports that production could happen at Walvis Bay on the south Atlantic Coast.
This would have obvious political and economic effects on Namibia, but I do wonder what impacts cobalt mining expansion could have on the ecology of northwest Namibia. Opuwa is located between the Skeleton Coast and Etosha National Park; if the company claims there could be hundreds of kilometers of cobalt able to be mined, there are serious implications for how such mining expansions— if taken in their entirety— are put into effect.
~Elizabeth
Do you think that if they get into the cobalt industry, that the Namibian government would have to be more responsive to the tech industry here in the U.S.? It sounds like it would be great for their economy, but it also sounds like there is a potential for a great power imbalance here.
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