Since 2012, Kenya has made a series of mineral discoveries, including the unearthing of 62.4B dollars worth of Niobium – a rare earth deposit. The discovery in Kenya’s Kwale county has made the area among the world’s top five rare earth deposits sites, and allows Kenya to enter a market that has long been dominated by China.
In 2012, Kenya discovered 600M barrels of oil reserves in Turkana county, one of the country’s poorest regions. It was announced, on Jan. 15, that two more wells struck oil, increasing estimate reserves to one billion barrels of oil.
But Kenya, East Africa’s economic powerhouse, is not the only African nation that has made fresh mineral discoveries. “The recent boom in new mining discoveries in countries such as Niger, Sierra Leone and Zambia will attract billions in foreign direct investments. Other countries like Mozambique, Tanzania and Uganda will similarly attract billions due to petroleum discoveries there,” Antony Mokaya of the Kenya Land Alliance, a local umbrella network of NGOs and individuals working on land reforms, stated.
Last year, both Uganda and Mozambique discovered oil. In 2006, an estimated two billion barrels of oil reserves were discovered in western Uganda, but last year’s discovery brings Uganda’s total oil deposits to 3.5B barrels. Mozambique’s first oil discovery last year is estimated to be 200M barrels. Ogwang predicts that these discoveries will soon see African countries dominating the list of the 15 fastest-growing economies in the world.
“More African countries, Kenya being a model example in East Africa, now favor a market-based economy which is highly competitive and the most liberal economic system. “In this system, market trends are driven by supply and demand with very few restrictions on who the actors are. It it a favorable environment for foreign investors,” he said, referring to the local mobile phone industry, which has been dominated by foreign investors because of its favorable regulatory policies. “As a result, growth in this sector is phenomenal. In the first 11 months of 2013, Kenya’s mobile phone money transactions were 19.5B dollars, which is more than the country’s current 18.4-billion-dollar national budget.”
Ogwang says that even more importantly, African countries are increasingly strengthening their partnerships with the East. Statistics by the Africa Economic Outlook, which provides comprehensive data on African economies, show that China is the largest destination for African exports, accounting for a quarter of all exports.
Trade with Brazil, Russia, India and China – the economic bloc referred to as BRIC’s – now accounts for 36% or 144B dollars of Africa’s exports, up from only 9% in 2002.
In comparison, Africa’s trade with the European Union and the United States combined, totals 148B dollars.
But Terry Mutsvanga, director of the Coalition Against Corruption, an anti-corruption lobby group in Zimbabwe, cautioned that Africa will first have to rein in its corrupt politicians before its resources can enrich its own people.
According to The World Bank, some of the world’s poorest people live in Africa, with one out of two Africans living in extreme poverty.
“Without Africa dealing with the cancer of political corruption blighting the continent and robbing it of revenue from mineral resources through corrupt politicians receiving bribes from investors … the continent shall continue to have the worst poverty levels globally,” Mutsvanga said.
Independent economic analyst, Jameson Gatawa from Zimbabwe, agreed. “Underhanded dealings in the mining of diamonds and other rich minerals here have fuelled poverty. The rich are getting richer and the poor are becoming poorer,” Gatawa said.
