Relief Coming to Mining Sector
Bennett Oghifo
In what appears to be a ground breaking move for the extractive minerals sector, a multilateral development finance institution is being established to ensure focused and concerted funding of the critical minerals sector.
The African Extractive Minerals Development Bank (AEMBank) is borne out of the necessity to swiftly enhance and structure in an efficient manner the entire value chain of the mining sector.
Recently the African Minerals Strategy Group (AMSG) entered into a collaboration agreement and became a shareholder of the Bank.
AMSG has as founding members 16 African countries and its main policy objective is to promote the growth and development of the sector within Africa.
In addition, the Commonwealth Enterprise and Investment Council is engaged as a strategic partner.
Transaction advisors and seed investor, CLG Securities Limited a pan African focused Advisory firm, disclosed that the bank is essentially formed on public private partnership principles and seeks to eliminate the pit to port mentality of most mining activities but rather assist in creating a deep value chain where value addition,beneficiation and industrialisation are the core tenents.
Given the aggressive demand for critical materials which are essential in the energy
transition phase to renewables,Africa has become a very important market and all efforts.must be made to ensure maximum benefits to its people.
Job creation,indigenous empowerment,sovereign revenues enhancement,forex generation will be some of the key objectives.
Funding is critical to the development of the sector and the Bank will cover this gap.
The bank will also assist sovereigns in leveraging their mineral reserves to shore up their currencies and become tradeable.
Major interest has been expressed by institutional investors,other DFis and private investors in engaging and becoming active stakeholders in the Bank.
AEMbank will provide a seismic shift in the funding of this critical and highly untapped sector.
