Seizing the Riches of Zambia's Mingomba Mine
Imperialist Exploitation of Africa Continues Unabated
African countries are said to be hopelessly in debt to global imperialist moneylenders. Much of the new value African workers produce in resource production and other sectors is torn away to service international debt. Additionally, foreign owners of the production facilities expropriate almost all the remaining added-value African workers produce. Little is left for development of the local and national economies and to produce social product and services necessary to build a self-reliant and well-rounded economy. Likewise, nothing is available to invest in social programs required to enhance the health, education and complete well-being of the inhabitants.
Significant amounts of money are borrowed internationally to build infrastructure projects that the imperialist companies demand so they can transport the extracted resources overseas. And yet more is borrowed to purchase military equipment from the main imperialist producers in the U.S. and Europe.
The Mingomba Mine
A headline in the Financial Times says, "Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos' backed startup discovers large-scale copper deposit in Zambia." To write "discovers" is a stretch, as similar robber barons including Ivanhoe Mines from Canada are already plundering copper deposits right next door in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in the giant Kamoa-Kakula copper mine. The same article boasts that the copper deposit stretching into Zambia to be developed as the Mingomba mine, "could make billions for Silicon Valley, provide minerals for the energy transition and help the U.S. in its rivalry with China. A spokesperson for the (Gates and Bezos company) KoBold Metals told CNBC on Monday that the company believes its Mingomba copper project in Zambia 'will be one of the world's biggest high-grade large copper mines.' A large-scale copper deposit could help in the global race to secure a supply of materials critical to the energy transition. Copper is in high demand due to its use in renewable energy and electric vehicles."
KoBold estimates the Mingomba deposit holds 247 million tonnes of ore with an average grade of 3.64 per cent copper, Reuters reports. The Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos' cartel believes the "vast copper deposit in Zambia" owned and controlled by them "offers a potential boost to the west's efforts to cut its reliance on China for metals vital to decarbonize everything from cars to power transmission systems."
Regarding infrastructure, Reuters writes without elaborating how the U.S. government is backing the development of the Lobito railway, a line to transport metals in the region connecting the DRC and Zambia to the Lobito port in Angola. Zambia is Africa's second largest copper producer after the DRC yet both countries are mired in extreme poverty and saddled with external imperialist debt.
Bill Gates' ownership of Kobold Metals runs through Breakthrough Energy, a climate and technology fund he and other billionaires founded in 2015 to further investments and their control in the expanding green sector. His fellow investors in this green adventure include Bridgewater Associates, Virgin Group's Richard Branson, Alibaba's Jack Ma and Amazon's Jeff Bezos. Other owners of the Kobold Metals copper cartel include U.S. venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, Norwegian energy giant Equinor and the world's largest mining group BHP. The California-based cartel KoBold currently has a market value of $1.15 billion.
Ownership of the new Zambian mine follows a typical
tortured
path through the markets of imperialist investments. The
Wall
Street
Journal reports: "As part of the investment deal,
KoBold agreed to pay $115m to the owners of the Lubambe
Copper
Mine, in
which private-equity firm EMR Capital owns an 80 per cent
stake
[and
...] in exchange, KoBold will receive a majority stake in
the
nearby
Mingomba deposit [in Zambia and ...] will invest $35m on
exploration
work at the Mingomba project, which is claimed to be the
world's
highest-grade undeveloped large copper deposit." The
paper
quotes EMR
Capital executive chairman Owen Hegarty as saying that
KoBold
will have
a 52 per cent stake in the Mingomba project while venture
partners EMR
Capital own 28 per cent. Josh Goldman, president of
KoBold
Metals, told
the Financial Times, "We now know that Mingomba
will be one of the very highest grade large copper mines
when
put into
production and it's very much like Kakula in scale and in
grade."
KoBold expects the Mingomba copper field will rival
output at
the
nearby Kamoa-Kakula project in the DRC, which forms part
of U.S.
billionaire Robert Friedland's vast global holdings.
Needless to say, the wheeling and dealing of the imperialist robber barons denies Africans control and a say over their economies, denies them the produced social value and the economic development of their homelands, and keeps them mired in underdevelopment and poverty. The foreign exploitation continues the centuries-old colonial iron grip of the imperialist marauders over the African continent.
The struggle in Canada for a moratorium on national debt servicing is a part of the effort to restrict the activities of the global robber barons and their worldwide moneylending and expropriation of social product. Canadians have a social responsibility to play a role in restraining the hand of the imperialists both here at home and in their continued exploitation of Africa, and to make a contribution to building a world as it should be free from imperialism and exploitation.
This article was published in
Volume 54 Number 43 - October 14, 2024
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2024/Articles/TS544317.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca