Story by Farai Gwaze
ZIMBABWE is expected to use this year’s annual Mining Indaba, slated for next week as a platform to attract external investors.
The highly anticipated 30th anniversary of Africa’s largest mining conference, the Mining Indaba, kicks off this Monday at the Capetown International Convention Centre, with government officials, global mining firms and investors expected to take part in the discussions.
Minister of Mines and Mining Development Honourable Zhemu Soda said, “In 2024 we are looking forward to extensive exploration which will allow Zimbabwe to discover new minerals and also generate new information. We’re ready for exploration activities like what happened in the Muzarabani basin. We have been able to discover that Zimbabwe hosts gas that has so far been confirmed, so we think that if we continue with that trajectory of inviting potential investors we should be able to discover much more than we have known from geological reports.”
The government’s thrust for working with investors is to ensure the downstream beneficiation and utilisation of mineral deposits.
“Already from the discovery that was done at Muzarabani basin, we are looking forward to some investors who will partner with Invictus on downstream beneficiation and utilisation of the gas that has been discovered. One of the uses would be for power generation which Zimbabwe has a major deficit on, so we are looking forward to having that gas beneficiated and that is not the only mineral that will be beneficiated,” he added.
8100 visitors, 900 investors along with over 700 executives from mining companies are expected to attend this year’s edition.
