There will be opportunities in the extraction, transport and processing of minerals in Africa for decades to come.Home to an estimated 30% of the earth’s remaining mineral resources, Africa will continue to attract investment from mining companies, despite the many challenges they may face.According to Matthew Goosen of Energy Capital & Power Africa, as a continent, Africa is the world’s second-largest minerals producer.“With many African countries actively pursuing mineral-based industrialisation strategies, the production of green energy minerals – such as lithium and cobalt, whose production is expected to increase by up to 500% by 2050 – will provide opportunities for countries seeking to transform and diversify their economies, thus contributing towards the global energy transition,” he writes.More than 2 000 mining projects are active across Africa, with around 260 companies involved in exploration. For them to be viable, efficient logistics chains must be in place or need to be developed.Major shipping companies have entered the market, promising end-to-end solutions.They will need to cope with the physical and bureaucratic bottlenecks that long-established freight forwarders, clearing agents and hauliers have learned to master.A study by McKinsey & Company states that “most of Africa lags the rest of the world in coverage of key infrastructure classes, including energy, road and rail transportation, and water infrastructure”.Funding is, however, not the major problem, according to authors Kannan Lakmeeharan, Qaizer Manji, Ronald Nyairo, and Harald Poeltner.“The challenge is that Africa’s track record in moving projects to financial close is poor: 80% of infrastructure projects fail at the feasibility and business-plan stage. “This is Africa’s infrastructure paradox—there is need and availability of funding, together with a large pipeline of potential projects, but not enough money is being spent,” they write.Despite the challenges, logistics companies will need to respond to the market forces at play, according to Heiko von der Gracht, director at the Centre for Futures Studies and Knowledge Management Supply Chain Management Institute, European Business School.He writes in the foreword to the third volume of the PwC report, Transport & Logistics 2030that “completely new logistics passageways will appear on our world map: passages between Asia and Africa, between Asia and South America and within Asia”. It’s expected that the relative weight of the f low of goods between the continents will shift considerably.The production of green energy minerals is expected to increase by up to 500%.– Matthew Goosen“
