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Africa can lure investors with data offering

28th February 2020

By: Tracy Hancock

Creamer Media Contributing Editor

     

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Africa is looking for new ways of attracting investment, with pockets of the continent being “quite progressive”, compared with other markets, such as Canada and Australia, geoscience software provider Seequent global channel and sales director Dion Blair tells Mining Weekly.

Blair gave a presentation on successfully unlocking mining investment decisions and integrated technological innovations in geoscience that will transform mining revenue and reduce costs as part of the Mining 2050 session at the 2020 Investing in African Mining Indaba.

Seequent’s solutions are focused on providing insights for better decision-making and improving connectivity across disciplines in terms of the mining life cycle while ensuring that information can be easily digested by all stakeholders such as investors, local government, community members and management.

“This is particularly important when communicating data at the start of a project’s life, when data is expensive to acquire, to stakeholders that are vital to the early exploration effort and the development of the project,” says Blair.

He adds that adopting technology as part of business operations and the decision-making process leads to reduced risks and costs. Active in Africa for more than ten years, the continent has been responsive to Seequent’s offering, says Blair.

Further, the global company has leveraged its work with multinationals and built a reputation in Africa as a trusted solutions provider, with large South African mining companies employing Seequent’s solutions.

Seequent has recently “had the privilege” of working with local government, developing a geoscience portal for Uganda, in collaboration with a consortium of government, industry and commercial organisations under the auspices of the African Union Commission.

“We are passionate about helping governments understand how they can entice and encourage investment through a geoscience portal that represents the potential of their land and exploration targets,” says Blair.

He notes that, at Mining Indaba, there was much talk about the richness of West Africa’s mineral wealth, particularly its gold deposits, highlighting that the introduction of geoscience data and the application of advanced technologies will accelerate exploration and development in the region.

To improve investor confidence, countries need to be open and demonstrate their willingness to collaborate, Blair states.

“Attracting investment in exploration depends on trust, credibility and access to geophysics and geological data at early stages of exploration.

“We have a responsibility to be agents of change-management and sustainability. If the robustness and quality of exploration data interpretation is lifted, it encourages more investor interest and partnerships.”

Meanwhile, to tackle the issue of version control experienced across the mining industry globally, Seequent continues to invest in providing greater transparency on all the aspects of a project being worked on, particularly in Africa, where geologists may be based in a remote country while management is based elsewhere.

Consequently, the company has developed a solution that allows for significantly large files to be sent from areas with poor connectivity to other locations in Africa or elsewhere. The files are compressed and, when imported to locations where there is greater connectivity, repopulated with the heady mathematical data.

“We are empowering a generation of people to interpret data in a way that grows communities and helps geologists and geophysicists in Africa play a significant part in the decisions on projects,” concludes Blair.

Edited by Nadine James
Features Deputy Editor

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