Angola’s ambassador to China, João Garcia Bires, has highlighted the role China is playing in supporting geological mapping in the African country.
He told the Quarterly Bulletin of the Macau Forum that Chinese specialists were helping the Angolan authorities in the carto- graphic surveying of the country, with the aim of locating mineral resources and ascertaining their quantity and quality.
This programme is being carried out under the National Geology Plan (known by its Portuguese acronym Planageo, from Plano Nacional de Geologia). Planageo has been under way for two years now and has to date surveyed a third of the country. The resulting maps are being studied and evaluated by Angolan agencies and Chinese specialists, he reported.
In addition, Angolan specialists have been in China for seven months, “refreshing and perfecting the knowledge and techniques to read and interpret the data obtained”, said Bires. He affirmed that the great benefit of Planageo was that it would liberate his country from its current dependence on petroleum by locating various mineral resources, including iron-ore and diamonds.
Separately, in the middle of this month, Angolan enterprise Mongo Tando started mining phosphates in the Cácata area of the province of Cabinda. The mining licence area covers 21.16 km2 and contains 10 200 000 t of phosphate rock, stated the Macauhub news agency. The report did not specify if this figure applied to reserves or reserves and resources.
Exploration started in 2009, and the company has invested some $120-million in the project and expects to achieve an annual production rate of 800 000 t. The report adds that the business predicts that it will extract and export about one-million tons of phosphates, as well as produce fertili- sers for agriculture; presumably this is what Mongo Tando plans to ramp up to in due course.
Meanwhile, India’s ambassador to Angola, Sushil Singha, has expressed confidence that, although Angola’s current financial situation was a challenge, trade between the two countries would diversify in the coming years. Currently, it is dominated by petroleum exports to India. He was speaking at an Economic Forum, in Luanda. His topic was ‘Eximbank of India Credit Lines for the Support of National Business’. He explicitly identified mining as one of the sectors which have “enormous potential and which are fundamental to the development of the Angolan economy”.
At the Mining Indaba, in Cape Town, in February, Angolan Geology and Mines Minister Francisco Queiroz reported on the progress with Planageo up to that point. Preliminary aerogeophysical survey data had identified 1 623 targets, of which 1 526 were magnetic and 27 radiometric.
Of the magnetic targets, 225 had been designated as priorities, the Minister said, being prospective for base metals, bauxite, carbonatites, copper, gold, iron-ore, lead, manganese, titanium and zinc, as well as kimberlites. Of the radiometric anomalies, 17 had been identified as priorities, being prospective for niobium, phosphates and zircon. When Planageo has completed, the country will have 470 geological maps that will cover the entire country. These would allow long-term exploration and prospecting for minerals over “the next 50 to 100 years”, he highlighted.