The Southern African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (SAIMM) held its 2016 SAIMM Student Debate in Johannesburg last month. The aim was to afford the participating teams the opportunity to discuss the relative merits of five Southern African countries as preferred mining investment destinations.

SAIMM Johannesburg branch chairperson John Luckmann introduced the debate, explaining that this year’s event was inspired by the most recent World Economic Forum on Africa, held in Kigali, Rwanda, which led some of the world’s leading investment strategists and political economists to relook at their perceptions of Africa as an investment destination.

SAIMM Johannesburg committee member Graham Stripp stated that Africa’s relatively new investment frontiers were already being regarded as “premier locations” for investment growth on the continent. He said that the new focus areas included Rwanda and the East African investment cluster of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.

Moreover, SAIMM Johannesburg committee member Russell Heins pointed out that the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region, consisting of, among others, South Africa, Botswana, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe, could start losing mining investment appeal to emerging mining destinations to the north and east. Hence, the SAIMM Johannesburg committee felt it pertinent that a few SADC member countries’ mining potential be highlighted at this year’s edition of the event.

“Botswana, the DRC, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe are also country affiliates of the SAIMM,” Stripp pointed out.

He explained that South Africa was excluded from the debate this year as it was hoped that this would “avoid local patriotic bias” and encourage all participants to look at the region’s tremendous mining potential beyond South Africa’s borders.

Students studying mining and metallurgy courses from the University of the Witwatersrand and the University of Johannesburg, in teams of four or five, pitched the investment merits of the chosen destinations to a panel of judges.

The teams were each given 12 minutes to convince the panel why the country they were representing had the strongest investment case. They highlighted the mineral wealth, the mining tax regime, the political climate and the level of infrastructural development, among other factors, which made the countries they were representing the most worthy of investment from potential investors. The teams were also asked questions by judges regarding their presentations and, in some cases, even general knowledge questions relating to mining in the respective countries.