The mining industry in South Africa is the fifth largest in the world, and today it accounts for more than 5% of the nation’s GDP. Moreover, the sector remains one of the country’s most important sources of employment, providing 16.2% – or nearly 1.4m – of the total formal non-agricultural jobs. The labour unrest that was seen in 2012 highlighted some of the challenges faced by the sector as it...
Africa Energy
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With a long-established track record as the continent’s largest financial platform and one of the world’s biggest mining producers, South Africa has significant economic clout in the region.
Located in the westernmost region of North Africa, Morocco has an impressively diversified economy and in recent years has benefited from steady growth. The country has strong trade links with the EU and has a young population – with the median age of its roughly 32m people at 27.3 years – which in turn provides the country with a large supply of available and comparatively skilled labour.
As a rapidly growing country with only modest energy resources, Morocco’s dependence on external power supplies continued to increase over 2012, with the value of energy imports jumping 11.9% year-on-year from 2011 to 2012. With 96% of energy needs met by fossil fuel imports, especially oil and coal, the country is in a precarious fiscal position as government budgets grapple with elevated oil...
With a new set of laws set to be passed in 2013 to replace the existing mining code, the government is seeking to open the sector to additional foreign investment and offer more concessions to extract and process the country’s mineral wealth. Phosphates mining accounted for 92.7% of the sector’s total production in 2011. Other mineral resources include gold, silver, barite, cobalt, copper,...
Nigeria’s 2011 output level was around 2.45m bpd of oil and condensate, about 2.9% of global production, making it the world’s 12th-largest supplier that year. Estimates of proven reserves for natural gas vary from 180.5 tcf to 187 tcf, but these figures may well underestimate the country’s potential. Indeed Nigeria’s natural gas is even more abundant than its oil, but the country has so far...