Gone are the days when mining was just about extracting ore from the ground, processing it and then selling it, says new South African Trade and Industry Minister Mandisi Mpahlwa, who sees today’s mining as playing a more crucial role and being linked to almost every sector that affects the country’s economy, embracing chemicals, manufacturing and service industries. Mpahlwa wants mining-industry-linked knowledge to be migrated into global markets. Speaking at the AngloGold Ashanti launch in Johannesburg, Mpahlwa says that, despite its risks and eventual finite horizon, the future, for the time being, still lies in the mining-industry-linked value-adding industrial sectors. For South Africa to have a successful economy, Mpahlwa believes it needs to package and sell the knowledge that it has acquired from its successful involvement in the mining industry. His view is that the country also needs to see how mining-industry-supporting manufactured and electronic products can be packaged for sale to international mining operations. He finds that all modern industrial economies and successful industrialising countries have recognised the importance of knowledge and value-adding industries and have put substantial public and private sector resources into developing these. He sees the AngloGold Ashanti merger as giving life to and supporting the aims and objectives of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad), a programme aimed at eradicating poverty and placing African countries on a path of sustainable development and growth. As Africa’s leading economy, he advocates that South Africa needs to play a primary role in ensuring that Africa is no longer on the fringes of the global economy. He sees this as being achievable through peace and security, market access, private-sector development, health and human resource develop-ment. Mpahlwa wants greater emphasis to be placed on developing South Africa’s skills base and for knowledge to be turned into products and expanding value-adding industries. He regards the merger as an example of how South African firms can move to the next level by participating in other African countries, while at the same time investing in their own economies and growing their private-sector enterprises. “Both companies are leaders in their individual countries and the two bring their experience, expertise and knowledge to the table,” he says. Ashanti, which has survived under some of the most difficult social, political and economic circumstances, brings 100 years of continuous mining and its sought- after orebodies, while AngloGold brings not only its experience and capital, but also its deep-level expertise. At the end of the 2004 financial year, the companies together produced 6,6-million ounces of gold and the combined entity is expected to become a seven-million-ounce to a 7,5-million-ounce producer. AngloGold Ashanti is now Africa’s largest gold-mining house and is expected to contribute further to Nepad in general and to the growth of the mining industry into other sectors in particular.