An economist calls for accelerated efforts to localise mineral processing in Botswana

Top economist, Naledi Madala of Absa Bank Botswana has called on Government budgeting to reflect serious and deliberate intentions to fast track mineral beneficiation in Botswana.

Speaking at this year’s Budget Pitso held in Gaborone on Tuesday, Mrs Naledi Madala said mineral beneficiation in Botswana has been a talk for years, noting that albeit efforts in the diamond space, very little has been done in other mineral sub-sectors such as coal and copper.

“There was a lot of talk about mineral beneficiation around 2012 – 13, but that topic has sort of died out now, it is not coming out clearly in the recent budget and budget strategy paper,” she said.

Madala went on to highlight opening of new Mines in the Kalahari Copper Belt.

“New mines are coming up, these should be met by deliberate intentions to say, how are we going make sure some of these minerals are processed or added value locally, which would then translate into significant job creation,” she said.

“If you take Khoemacau Mine for example, reports indicates that there is a lot of copper resource, so if we can accelerate our efforts in terms of beneficiation exercise there will be a lot of value that can come out of that.”

There has been calls by locals for government to come up with ways in which minerals mined in Botswana could be processed into semi finished products and some finished products instead of being exported as raw materials, underscoring that the current status quo exports jobs to other countries.

However, counter arguments to that have been that to process raw minerals locally is a complex undertaking that requires right infrastructure, the sophisticated skills and issues of economies of scale, factors which Botswana is currently lacking behind.