There may be a trillion dollars worth of minerals buried underneath the African continent — but information on those resources remains in many cases unknown, unmapped or otherwise underutilized.
That’s why the World Bank is creating a $1 billion fund to help governments map the continent’s resources and integrate that data into comprehensive platform that is accessible to mining companies, governments and the public. The ambitious effort, which is still in its infancy, aims not only to make investment in Africa more attractive to mining companies, but also to create a level playing field for governments to negotiate with those very companies, according to Paolo de Sa, the manager of the oil, gas, and mining unit at the bank.
The fund, to be officially launched in July, will support the African Union’s strategy to help governments take advantage of and better manage their mineral resources, part of a larger effort to help the extractives industry contribute more to the development of African economies.
Building the billion dollar map will involve data collection and mapping, but also the integration of that data into a universal platform. That process includes gathering and integrating information that already exists in government ministries, conducting gap analyses, and then implementing surveys and mapping projects across the continent to fill in those gaps.
For governments
While outside expertise will be certainly needed, an important part of the effort will be capacity building in government-run geological surveys in a regional integration effort spearheaded by the African Union, De Sa told Devex.
“At the end of the day, the governments are the owners of the information, and they need to be capable of updating and interpreting it and using it for the different policy objective that they have,” he said.
The World Bank, for its part, plans to continue support for African geological surveys at its current level, which will amount to about $200 million of the total amount allocated for the fund. The institution is in the process of creating a multi-donor trust fund for contributions from donor governments, and De Sa said that the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia had expressed initial interest in supporting the fund, while eventually, he hopes, mining companies themselves might also contribute to the effort.
The mapping and harmonization effort itself is modeled on the way that Canada and Australia integrated their provincial surveys as well as similar efforts underway in the European Union.
Capacity building has already started in Southern and Eastern Africa, where the World Bank already supports several projects with government surveys. De Sa said that in two to three years, data integration will likely expand to Central and Western Africa.
Scientific project, not business investment
The prospect of monetizing the commercially relevant information should be an impetus for governments to ensure the accessibility of their information, but the true value of the maps will be in the way the data informs national discussions and decisions on resource management.
“This is not a money-making investment, this is much more of a scientific, access to data and transparency exercise from our point of view,” De Sa noted about a project he sees as having potential beneficial “side effects” beyond increasing investments and raising revenues for the government.
“It will be a very, very strong tool to inform government on policies related to the management of other natural resources, development of infrastructure, and of course management of the most precious substance on Earth — water,” he said.
While the goal of mapping the entire continent is very long-term, De Sa said that, assuming the initiative goes well, an obvious next step would be to create another fund to come up with an integrated map of South American mineral resources.
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About the author
Paul Stephens
Paul Stephens is a former Devex staff writer based in Washington, D.C. As a multimedia journalist, editor and producer, Paul has contributed to the Los Angeles Times, Washington Monthly, CBS Evening News, GlobalPost, and the United Nations magazine, among other outlets. He's won a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting for a 5-month, in-depth reporting project in Yemen after two stints in Georgia: one as a Peace Corps volunteer and another as a communications coordinator for the U.S. Agency for International Development.
