Uranium boom attracts 2 foreign investors

Sam Banda Jnr
Malawi Daily Times

The exploration of Uranium in Karonga has excited international mining companies who are now flocking to the country in search of minerals, it has been learnt.

Latest investors include an Australian investor, Globe Uranium, and a South African company, Taurus Resources, who are exploring Uranium and Zinc.

Director for Geological Survey Department Leonard Kalindekafe said in an interview in Zomba on Monday that Globe Uranium which came in the country last year was exploring uranium whereas Taurus Resources was searching for both uranium and zinc.

“This country has proved that it has potential and this is clearly seen through an increased demand of companies that want to explore various mineral resources,” Kalindekafe said. He said the companies were searching for uranium in Kasungu and Livingstonia in Rumphi and Zinc in central Malawi districts of Dowa and Salima.

He said the ministry’s geologists were currently busy in the field assisting the two companies. Currently, an important Uranium project for the economic development of the country is being carried out at Kayelekera in Karonga by Paladin (Africa) Limited another Australian company.

Paladin has embarked on mine construction which is expected to cost K28 billion (about US$190 million. It is planned to produce about 1,500 tones of uranium oxide worth K37 billion (US$270 million) annually at current prices for over seven years.

The annual volume represents 10 percent of GDP and 50 percent of total export income. In another development, results of gold exploration project, which Geological Survey Department has been carrying out on Kirk Range Mountains has confirmed the highest value for the gold.

Kalindekafe said results from South Africa and their own laboratories confirmed and revealed the highest value for Gold at 1.57 percent, further stressing that even 0.1 percent is consideredof economic significance. He also said the results were very interesting, taking into consideration that the high values were not from stream or soil samples, but rather outcrops.

According to Kalindekafe, since 1906 the problem with Gold and other precious metal occurrence in the Kirk Range mountains has been that of not knowing the source rock, which they had now found. But he said the major challenge lying ahead of them was to prove was whether there were enough deposits of the mineral worth mining.

Apart from gold exploration, the Geological Department is also exploring coal at Nthalire in Chitipa where it has proven over 15 million tones of bituminous to semi bituminous coal. It is also remapping Mangochi-Makanjira-Lake Malombe area where large areas of green granites and marbles have been delineated.

Geological Survey, which is reeling from financial resources, laboratory facilities and shortage of staff among others, traces its origins from 1918 when the first geologist was recruited beforethe department was officially born in 1922.