Major International Business Headlines Brief::: 26 September 2022

Mon Sep 26 07:00:03 CAT 2022

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Major International Business Headlines Brief::: 26 September 2022 

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ü  Pound slumps to all-time low against dollar

ü  Four-day week campaign: MP submits bill to Parliament

ü  Kwasi Kwarteng: I want to keep cutting taxes

ü  Kwasi Kwarteng defends massive tax cuts as fair for all

ü  Pound sinks as investors question huge tax cuts

ü  Kenya: 'You Can't Eat GDP' - Njoroge, Yatani Clash On GDP Impact On Livelihoods

ü  Africa: Tunisia to Host Continental Free Trade Area Negotiating Forum On September 26-27

ü  West Africa: Air Traffic Controllers Strike Disrupts Flights in West Africa

ü  Nigeria Is Producing Less and Less Oil. Here's Why

ü  Tanzania: VP Calls for Just Transition to Renewable Energy

ü  Tanzania: No Cause for Alarm On Eacop Execution - Govt

ü  South Africa: Cabinet Briefed On Eskom's Plans to Avoid Load Shedding

ü  Malawians Welcome Government's U.S.$50m Credit From Arab Bank for Fuel Importation

ü  Kenya: Most Consumers to Continue Shopping Online Post-Pandemic - Report

ü  Africa: To Reach Net Zero the World Still Needs Mining. After 26 Years, Here's What I've Learned About This 'Evil' Industry

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Pound slumps to all-time low against dollar

The pound has fallen to its lowest level against the US dollar since decimalisation in 1971.

In early Asia trade, sterling fell by more than 4% to $1.0327 before regaining some ground to around $1.05.

That came after UK Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng unveiled historic tax cuts funded by huge increases in borrowing.

The pound has also been under pressure as the dollar has been boosted by the US central bank continuing to raise interest rates.

The euro also touched a fresh 20-year-low against the dollar in morning Asia trade amid investor concerns about the risk of recession as winter approaches with no sign of an end to the energy crisis or the war in Ukraine.

Peter Escho, the co-founder of investment firm Wealthi, said: "All currencies are getting sold off against the US dollar, so there is a large element of US dollar strength. But with the pound, it has really been exacerbated by news that the new government will be cutting taxes, which is inflationary.

"Add to that recent energy subsidies and news that the Bank of England might need to have an emergency rate-hike meeting, this all results in a sense of panic," he added.

Last week, global markets tumbled after the US Federal Reserve and several other major central banks, including the Bank of England, raised interest rates as they try to control rising prices.

If the pound stays at this low level against the dollar, imports of commodities priced in dollars, including oil and gas, will be more costly. Other goods from the US could also be considerably more expensive and British tourists visiting America will find that their holiday money does not go as far as before sterling's slide.

Investors will be watching the pound's movements closely as financial markets open in the UK, Europe - and later on Monday - the US.-BBC

Four-day week campaign: MP submits bill to Parliament

An MP has tabled a Parliamentary bill to reduce the maximum working week to four days.

Peter Dowd, Labour MP for Bootle in Merseyside, is campaigning for maximum hours to be cut back from 48 to 32.

He said it would give "every British worker the chance of moving to a four-day week".

The bill is due to be discussed in the House of Commons on 18 October and must proceed successfully through several stages before it can become law.

Many British firms taking part in an international six-month trial of the four-day working week have said they will continue with it after the pilot.

As part of the scheme, employees retain their full pay while working 80% of their previous hours.

At the trial's half-way point, data has showed productivity has been maintained or improved at the majority of participating firms.

However, some companies in the scheme found the move to reduced hours "trickier".

Mr Dowd, a former shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, said: "I am introducing this legislation because we're long overdue a shorter working week.

"In the UK, workers put in some of the longest working hours across Europe while pay and productivity remains low in comparison."

The bill includes a clause saying employees working more than 32 hours should be paid an overtime rate of 1.5 times their ordinary rate.

Trial adoption

Joe Ryle, director of the 4 Day Week Campaign, said the move to a shorter working week would make people "much happier".

"It would give us the time to properly rest, enjoy a better quality of life and boost productivity at work," he added.

"The 9-5, 5-day working week is outdated and no longer fit for purpose."

South Cambridgeshire District Council recently became the first UK local authority to pilot a four-day week, with no cut in workers' pay, while Bristol-based charity City to Sea adopted it permanently this year, saying it was countering a "blaze and burn culture" in workplaces.

Before the 2019 General Election, the Labour Party said it wanted a 32-hour working week, with no loss of pay, within 10 years.

Mr Dowd has tabled a Ten Minute Rule Bill, which allows a backbench MP to make their case for a new bill in a speech up to 10 minutes.-BBC

Kwasi Kwarteng: I want to keep cutting taxes

Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng: "What I'm focused on, is tax cuts across the board"

Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng has said he wants to keep cutting taxes as part of an effort to boost UK economic growth.

After announcing a massive shake-up of taxation on Friday, Mr Kwarteng told the BBC there was "more to come".

The government wants to bolster the economy amid concerns the UK may already be in recession.

Ministers also plan to allow more migrant workers in some sectors as part of its growth strategy - in order to address labour shortages.

A government source told the BBC ministers would set out plans to change migration rules before the end of the year.

Mr Kwarteng announced the biggest package of tax cuts in 50 years on Friday, which included scrapping the top rate of income tax.

The move drew criticism from Labour, which said the tax cuts would benefit the richest.

Many investors were also concerned about the package, with the pound sinking against the dollar to fresh 37-year lows, and UK-listed stocks falling.

But on Sunday, Mr Kwarteng denied the measures helped the rich more, and suggested further tax cuts were on the cards.

"We've actually put more money into people's pockets," he said. "We're bringing forward the cut in the basic rate [of income tax] and there's more to come.

"I want to see over the next year, people retain more of their income, because I believe it's the British people that are going to drive this economy," he said.

In its growth plan, the government said it had an "ambitious" programme to boost the economy which would include a review of the tax system to make it "simpler".

But former Conservative chancellor, Lord Kenneth Clarke, said the plan risked driving up inflation without helping the economy to grow.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4's the World this Weekend programme, Lord Clarke said he did not accept the premise "that you make tax cuts for the wealthiest 5%, and it makes them work so much harder, and rush to invest, and it pays for itself or even attracts investment into the country".

"I'm afraid that's the kind of thing that's usually tried in Latin American countries without success," he said. "If it was so simple, we would have got rid of taxes altogether some time ago."

"What the increased spending power that you give to the better-off 5% is going to do, is run the risk of further stimulating inflation. And we're going into a serious inflationary recession this winter."

Migration measures

Meanwhile, a government source told the BBC Number 10 believed more skilled migration would support its plan for growth.

The source said: "We need to put measures in place so that we have the right skills that the economy, including the rural economy, needs to stimulate growth.

"That will involve increasing numbers in some areas and decreasing in others.

"As the prime minister has made clear, we also want to see people who are economically inactive get back into work."

Businesses have been asking for more visas for skilled workers to plug gaps in the UK workforce.

Where are Britain's missing million workers?

The shortage occupation list is expected to be expanded to help firms recruit overseas workers to deal with labour shortages.

The government is also looking at lifting the cap on seasonal workers, according to reports.

During her Conservative leadership campaign, Prime Minister Liz Truss said she would tackle farming labour shortages - partly caused by post-Brexit freedom of movement restrictions and exacerbated by the Covid pandemic - with a short-term expansion to the seasonal workers scheme.-BBC

Kwasi Kwarteng defends massive tax cuts as fair for all

Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng on his mini-budget: "Not a gamble at all"

Kwasi Kwarteng has said massive tax cuts aimed at boosting economic growth are fair for all despite the highest earners gaining the most.

The chancellor scrapped the top rate of income tax as part of the biggest package of tax cuts in 50 years.

Labour and some Tory MPs have said it was wrong to cut taxes for the wealthy during a cost-of-living crisis.

But Mr Kwarteng said he was "being fair" by reducing taxes right across the income bracket.

The package of measures, which has been dubbed a mini-budget, will be paid for by a sharp rise in government borrowing amounting to tens of billions of pounds.

Paul Johnson, director of the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies, said the plans were a "big gamble", with money being pumped into the economy when inflation remains high.

There was an immediate reaction in financial markets, as the pound sunk and UK stocks fell.

In an interview with BBC News political editor Chris Mason, the chancellor said: "I don't think it's a gamble at all.

"What was a gamble, in my view, was sticking to the course we are on."

Mr Kwarteng insisted not cutting taxes and continuing to follow the path of the previous government - led by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson - was more risky.

"So what we had to do was have a reboot, a rethink," Mr Kwarteng said.

He said his mini-budget was not an admission of failure, as Labour suggested in response to his statement, and a recession forecasted by the Bank of England was "not inevitable"

But, he said, "we also recognise we could do things better".

He said his moves to reduce income tax, scrap a planned rise in National Insurance and support households with energy bills would "help the most vulnerable people in society get through a difficult time".

Asked whether the UK economy was now in recession, Mr Kwarteng said that while, "technically, the Bank of England said that there was a recession", he thought it "would be shallow" and he hoped "we would rebound and grow".

When pressed, the chancellor said he did not acknowledge that the UK was in recession and that one was not inevitable.

The Institute of Fiscal Studies said the richest 10% of households would gain the most from Mr Kwarteng's measures, which undo the tax rises introduced by former chancellor Rishi Sunak, who left office in July.

Labour's shadow business secretary Seema Malhotra told BBC Two's Newsnight: "What was really striking today in Parliament was the admission, effectively, of 12 years of failure of what the Conservatives have been doing.

"And Kwasi Kwarteng and his colleagues failed to connect the fact that we've got high taxes because we've had low growth."

She added: "If you're going to have a plan for growth, it's got to be a proper plan. Even today wasn't a proper plan. Today was a set of tax cuts that are supporting the wealthiest in our society."

Torsten Bell, the chief executive of the Resolution Foundation think tank, said those earning £1m annually will get a £55,000 tax cut next year.

Conservative former cabinet minister Julian Smith said the chancellor's decision to hand a "huge" tax cut to the wealthy at a time of national crisis was "wrong".

When Mr Smith's concerns were put to the chancellor, he said the former chief whip "knows about party loyalty" and "lots of people feel we've got to get Britain moving".

A graphic showing what employees will take home under the new tax regime

Getting the economy moving will, according to Mr Kwarteng, require doing things differently, what he called "a new approach for a new era, focused on growth".

That new approach will be funded by borrowing, which economists think could climb to £120bn within three years.

In Parliament, John Glen, a former junior finance minister, pointedly asked Mr Kwarteng about market reaction, saying "there is a clear concern" over the level of borrowing needed to afford these tax cuts.

Prime Minister Liz Truss, who took office this month, has said she was prepared to make "unpopular decisions" to spur economic growth and support those struggling with the rising cost of living.

She won the Tory leadership election on a platform of upending what she has called the economic "orthodoxy" of the Treasury and reversing tax hikes introduced by her predecessor.

Now Mr Kwarteng is putting her economic agenda to the test.-BBC

Pound sinks as investors question huge tax cuts

The pound has fallen to a fresh 37-year low against the dollar as financial markets reacted to the biggest tax cutting moves in 50 years.

UK stocks also dropped after chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng outlined a series of tax cuts and economic measures in a massive shake-up of the country's finances.

The pound fell more than 3% against the dollar, dropping below $1.09.

Sterling has fallen recently over worries about the economy and partly due to a stronger US dollar.

The pound also fell more than 1% against the euro on Friday, dropping to €1.12.

Mr Kwarteng refused to comment on the dropping value of the currency, saying he "doesn't comment on market movements".

The cost of government borrowing soared following the announcement, rising by near-record amounts, as investors did the sums over the new strategy.

According to Bloomberg data, analysts expect UK interest rates to hit 5.2% in August 2023, with expectations rising that there could be a one percentage point interest rate hike at the Bank of England's next meeting in November.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), an economic think tank, said the market reaction was "worrying" as the government's new strategy relied on investors being willing to lend more to the UK.

"The plan seems to be to borrow large sums at increasingly expensive rates, put government debt on an unsustainable rising path, and hope that we get better growth," said IFS director Paul Johnson.

graph of pound dollar with date stamp

Mr Johnson said the new strategy would inject demand into a high inflation economy, risking further price rises. At the same time the Bank of England was pulling in the opposite direction, and was likely to raise interest rates even further in response to the £45bn tax reduction.

The Bank of England needs to make an emergency, unscheduled rate hike as soon as next week "to regain credibility with the market", said Deutsche Bank strategist George Saravelos.

He said that move would also send a strong signal that the bank is "willing to do 'whatever it takes' to bring inflation down quickly".

Former US Treasury secretary Larry Summers warned the pound could fall below the dollar due to the huge spending commitments outlined by Mr Kwarteng.

"It makes me very sorry to say, but I think the UK is behaving a bit like an emerging market turning itself into a submerging market," Mr Summers told Bloomberg.

"Between Brexit, how far the Bank of England got behind the curve and now these fiscal policies, I think Britain will be remembered for having pursuing the worst macroeconomic policies of any major country in a long time."

Jane Foley, a currency strategist at Rabobank, said the sell-off of sterling showed investors have doubts about the government's plans.

"They're worried that some of these tax cuts that have been announced aren't going to be fully funded. That will result in a large amount of debt at a time when the Bank of England is going to be selling some of its holdings of UK government debt," she said.

"I think this government does need to provide a lot more reassurance that it does have fiscal sensibility in order. This is not the message that's come across this morning."

The UK's FTSE 100 index of major shares fell more than 2%, dropping to its lowest level for more than two months, reflecting concerns that the plan to stimulate growth might not pay off.

The plan also contributed to a sell-off in US markets, where the three main share indexes fell more than 2%.

"Ultimately, the growth dice have been rolled. But it is too early to know if the gamble will succeed and boost confidence enough to encourage businesses and people to spend and invest, stimulating the UK economy," said Karen Campbell-Williams, head of tax at Grant Thornton.

Thomas Pugh, economist at RSM UK said there was likely to be a boost to the economy of "roughly 1%" over the next year, reducing the risk of a longer recession, but that the longer term outlook was less positive.

"There was nothing in the budget that makes us more optimistic about the long-term growth trend of the economy. Trend growth is currently probably half of the 2.5% the Chancellor has set as his new target," he said.

And while it should initially soothe some of the recession we are already likely in, the similarly huge borrowing has sent markets reeling.

It has been one of the worst days for UK Government bonds in decades, with some of biggest one-day hikes in the cost of borrowing since the 1990s.

This has consequences not just for government, but it sets the basis for long-term borrowing rates for companies and householders.

The lack of numbers, visibility, and quantifiable commitment to reining in government borrowing has added to uncertainty in markets.

The government had to tell the markets that it needed to borrow an extra £72bn this year, but did not publish the numbers behind that. Interest rates charged for British debt hit 4%, having been 3.1% earlier this week, and 1.8% at the beginning of the leadership contest with Rishi Sunak.

The Treasury's answer to all this is a table of forecasts which shows how much tax revenue would be raised if its reforms were able to permanently raise growth in the economy.

But that table, while an aspiration that every chancellor and every politician seeks, has not convinced the markets. It is an assumption of extra tax revenue that has replaced actual tax.

The prime minister criticised bean counters in her leadership campaign. Today's plan only shows one side of the ledger. For a chancellor making a debut, it is usual to focus on fiscal credibility. That was not the priority here.-BBC

Kenya: 'You Can't Eat GDP' - Njoroge, Yatani Clash On GDP Impact On Livelihoods

Nairobi — Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) Governor Patrick Njoroge and Treasury Cabinet Secretary Ukur Yatani have publicly differed on the impact of Gross Domestic Product, GDP, on the economy and livelihoods.

Njoroge who spoke on Monday during the induction of Members of the National Assembly lamented that citizens are not interested in the county's GDP but instead, are interested with how those monetary values measured by the government through the Treasury helps them.

"You cannot eat GDP. It is not GDP that people are interested in. The issue is, the incomes that we are measuring, are they helping people?" he posed.

Njoroge said while GDP is a key indicator of economic performance it cannot be the overring mechanism to gauge the overall economic wellbeing of the nation's citizens.

"GDP is a means to an end, not an end in itself, but the ultimate goal remains improving quality of life, especially for those who are the worst off," he said.

But in an apparent response, outgoing Treasury Cabinet Secretary Ukur Yatani told newly-elected senators during the Senate induction on Thursday that former President Uhuru Kenyatta's government had delivered economic prosperity to Kenyans citing the county's GDP.

"In the last one year, we realized a GDP growth of 7.5 per cent unheard of in the last 15 years," he remarked.

CBK had in 2020 reported a decline of 0.3 per cent in the country's economic growth before a rebound at 7.4 per cent in 2021. The country further experienced of 6.8 per cent in the first quarter of 2022.

Yatani also dismissed claims that the government only had Sh92 million as a discretionary income left in the Treasury saying government is funded on a daily basis in fulfillment of the competing needs such as payment of salaries, allocations to counties, parliament, judiciary and settling debts.

"You hear some people saying Treasury has Sh92 million left. That is ignorance. Government doesn't collect money and keep it. We collect money on a daily basis and distribute it based on competing needs."

Yatani argued counties have over the past years relied so much on equitable sharing and completely ignored their own sources of revenue generation.

"The county governments fully functional, with all the professionals and the infrastructure cannot create revenue on their own," he claimed.

Treasury CS pointed fingers on the laxity in the county governments on remitting collected revenue to the national government saying the growth of the economy had been hindered by the thriving rate of corruption within county governments.

"Corruption has thrived in the county governments to the extent that I am not even sure whether the dream of the constitution making organs is fully realized," he said.

- Capital FM.

Africa: Tunisia to Host Continental Free Trade Area Negotiating Forum On September 26-27

Tunis/Tunisia — The meeting of the Continental Free Trade Area Negotiating Forum (CFTA-NF) will be held on September 26 -27 in Tunisia, Tunisian General Labour Union (French: UGTT) Deputy Secretary-General in charge of Arab and International Relations Hedia Arfaoui told TAP on Saturday.

Nearly one hundred African trade unionists and representatives of international organisations are to attend. The meeting seeks to to guarantee decent work and take account of the position of trade unions in free trade operations in Africa.

Arfaoui also announced the holding, for the first time in Tunisia, of the African Trade Union Confederation (ATUC) Annual General Council Meeting on September 28-30.

A meeting of the seven largest African trade unions is scheduled on the sidelines of this meeting to discuss the development of a unified African strategy to defend workers' rights, she added.

West Africa: Air Traffic Controllers Strike Disrupts Flights in West Africa

Flights in and out of airports in a number of countries in West and Central Africa have ground to a halt after air traffic controllers defied a ban and launched a "wildcat strike" on Friday to demand better working conditions.

The Union of Staff at the Agency for Aerial Navigation Safety in Africa and Madagascar (ASECNA), which regulates air traffic control across 18 countries, stopped working on Friday during a dispute over pay and working conditions.

Flights in and out of Burkina Faso, Mali, Cote d'Ivoire, Senegal and Cameroon, among other countries, were affected.

Hundreds of passengers were stranded at the Douala International airport in Cameroon on Saturday morning, the country's national television CRTV reported. National carrier Camair-Co said on Friday it had cancelled all its flights due to the strike.

In Senegal, the airport departure board showed cancellations for flights operated by Brussels Airlines, Kenyan Airways and Emirates. In Cote d'Ivoire, eight flights scheduled to leave the commercial hub of Abidjan on Saturday were cancelled.

ASECNA told customers to check airline websites for updates.

Hundreds of flights across Africa are canceled as #asecna (air traffic controllers) went on a 48hrs strike to demand higher wages.#flightcancelled pic.twitter.com/lMIURqXenE-- alhagiemanka (@ALHAGIEMANKA) September 23, 2022

The strike action, banned by a number of court rulings, is expected to last for 48 hours.

"In spite of the prohibition of the strike by all the courts ... the Union of Air Traffic Controllers' Unions (USYCAA) has launched a wildcat strike," ASECNA said on Friday.

"We have already exhausted both administrative and institutional remedies in the management of this crisis, but we have in front of us trade unionists who are stubborn to do whatever they want," ASECNA's head of human resources, Ceubah Guelpina, told a press conference.

'Minimum' service

The USYCAA union said in a statement published on Twitter that its members would cease providing services to all but "sensitive" flights until their demands are met.

A USYCAA official in Burkina Faso told AFP news agency that a "minimum service" was assured for military and humanitarian flights.

On Thursday, a court in Senegal suspended the call to strike by air traffic controllers in Senegal and Cote d'Ivoire, ASECNA said.

ASECNA said it has developed a contingency plan to allow airlines to take alternative routes when certain airports are impacted by temporary staff shortages, should the strike drag on.

Paul Francois Gomis, a leader of Senegalese air traffic controllers who were on strike, said that some union members in Cameroon, Congo and the Comoros had been arrested for taking part in the strike.

(with wires)

Nigeria Is Producing Less and Less Oil. Here's Why

Nigeria's oil output was at the lowest since 1990 as its crude oil production fell below 1 million barrels per day (bpd) in August 2022. And data from the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries in early September showed that Angola and Libya have overtaken Nigeria as Africa's highest crude oil producers. The Conversation Africa's Wale Fatade asked Omowumi Iledare, professor emeritus in petroleum economics and policy research to explain what's happening.

What are the drivers of the decline in oil production?

Production has been declining since 2012. It's a combination of a lot of factors.

I think insecurity of assets is top on the list - and insecurity of life. Secondly, the maturity of the fields. Thirdly, moving away from onshore to deep water.

There is also a declining capacity to produce from a technical production point of view and from a market production point of view because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Technical production is what is actually coming out of the wells and fields. This is obviously affected by the number of wells that are put into production and the less producing wells in a field at its peak, less the aggregate field output.

Market production is what the country is able to put into the international market and the domestic market.

Both of them are related, but the market fundamentals of supply and demand affect both of them differently depending on the inventory level. Inventory levels are what's kept in the tank farms where crude oil is stored while waiting for exports and pipeline movement to the refineries.

What are the constraints on what's coming out of the wells?

Increasing technical production requires drilling more wells, finding more reserves and installing more infrastructure. When you have infrastructure decay, and field productivity decline, the technical production will decline.

Since 2003 Nigeria has not put any bidding processes in place to meet exploration and development of fields. And it takes a lot of years before you can tie them up for production.

There have also not been any new leases. The last one was 2007 apart from the bidding for marginal fields in 2003. As a result we see the maturity of the basins. Playing and production capacity has remained static at about 2.5 million barrels per day.

In the Niger Delta, an investment of about $19 billion is needed to keep the level of production capacity stable, based on my own estimates.

We've not done beyond 2.5 million barrels per day production capacity since 2002.

Nigeria is fortunate that the deep water wells have been able to cover the decline in production from shallow water and the diminishing onshore production. This brought production in Nigeria up to 1.8 million barrels in 2016.

But now we have theft and vandalism that's affecting the market production - what Nigeria is able to export, what it's able to transfer to the refineries.

How does insecurity affect crude oil production?

There's asset insecurity. Almost 20% of the capacity of Nigeria is being stolen, about 400 to 500,000 barrels per day. But this isn't happening through pipelines. So there must be some type of conniving, because it is just unbelievable that you can move that much crude oil under the watchful eyes of the security agents - either the navy or the army, or whatever. Because there's no way someone can be stealing 500,000 barrels per day by tapping the pipes in the entire Niger Delta.

So that's what I mean by asset insecurity.

What would it take for Nigeria to reduce its heavy reliance on oil?

The engine that will accelerate diversification of Nigeria's economy is oil revenue, and perhaps gas revenue in the future. This is what you can use to diversify the economy, if properly used. Unfortunately, that has not been so. Spending approximately a trillion Naira per year over the last 10 - 20 year, to subsidise petroleum product consumption, is not the best way to spend oil money.

The diversification of the Nigerian economy requires the federal government letting go of its hold on some sectors in the economy. They have their hands in so many things. One is power. It is not the responsibility of the federal government to generate power for the nation. It is the responsibility of the federal government to just develop policies that will allow investors to invest in the power sector value chain.

The responsibility of the central government is to create an enabling environment. They are not doing that well because of provincialism.

Second, the diversification of the economy requires the removal of energy subsidies at the consumption end of the energy value chain with zero value addition. The government is spending so much money on the petrol subsidy it is unable to do what really matters. This includes spending money on infrastructure so that goods and services can be moved from the source to the market.

The physical infrastructure that is supposed to be the responsibility of the government is bad because it is not doing what it's supposed to do with its oil money.

The government too should not cloud out domestic investors. The government is borrowing too much money. It should think more about manpower development. It's the government's responsibility to make skill workers available for the industry. But Nigeria's universities have been closed for seven months.

So the economy has not been diversified at all. Oil is contributing a lot to government revenues but not to the economy as a whole. Nearly 80% of exports is accounted for by oil. That's why the economy is not growing. Nigeria's economy grew by 3.54% in real terms in the second quarter of 2022. If you have infrastructure deficiency, skilled manpower deficiency, and road infrastructure deficiency, you won't get economic growth.

The government must begin to think in terms of decentralising so many things that they take on.

What could the government do to reverse the trend?

You need to make more leases available quickly so that people can begin to get the rights to produce and export.

The biggest challenge right now is attacks on pipelines and criminality. The government must have the courage to prosecute those stealing crude oil and those vandalising the pipelines. If it continues to reward criminality, crime will continue to expand and the oil and gas industry may collapse.

In the process, it must also remove the cloud of uncertainty in oil and gas in Nigeria where energy transition is putting a dampener on investment. Also, the government should put more effort into the use of natural gas for domestic expansion. I don't subscribe to this emphasis on exports of natural gas from Nigeria. I'm a believer that using gas for domestic economic growth is the way to go.

That's why the Petroleum Industry Act is so good. It is very supportive of domestic gas development for local economy.

I want to emphasise also the need for Nigeria to have a transformation leadership mindset. Transformation leadership is not transactional. Such leadership mindset encourages the heart, inspires shared vision, and motivates others in the management team to act.

It is a leadership style that is authoritative but not authoritarian in modelling the way to go. It is not averse to challenging traditional management processes that are not optimal.

Omowumi Iledare, Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) Professorial Chair in Oil and Gas Economics and Management, University of Cape Coast

Tanzania: VP Calls for Just Transition to Renewable Energy

VICE-PRESIDENT Dr Philip Mpango has said that Tanzania and the rest of Africa need a just transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy.

Addressing the 77th Session of the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday, Dr Mpango said that Africa must be given time to adjust since majority of Africans have no access to energy.

The VP is in the United States to represent President Samia Suluhu Hassan at the UNGA meeting which was officially opened on September 13 this year.

Dr Mpango said "the well-established principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities must be observed".

He added: "We call upon the lifting of opposition to global financing and implementation of transformative projects in our countries that aim to harness our hydrocarbon deposits for energy and other equally important uses to address our critical developmental needs."

Dr Mpango further said that "as long as robust Environmental Social and Impact Assessments (ESIAs) have been done and concrete measures taken to effectively address environmental and democratic governance concerns of our citizens, our Sovereign rights to pursue transformative projects should be respected."

He also called upon transparency in the conduct of carbon credit markets so that Africa benefits fairly from its earnest effort in taking care of the carbon sinks.

Giving an example, he said Tanzania has preserved over 30 per cent of the total land area, almost equivalent to the size of Germany which includes forests and wildlife parks.

Regarding climate change, he said Tanzania appreciates all individual efforts and other collective measures taken thus far in implementing interventions geared towards upscaling mitigation and adaptation as stipulated in the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 and the Paris Agreement of 2015.

However, he said despite the efforts, they are observing unprecedented changes across the whole climate system in every region.

He said the most vulnerable countries including Tanzania, have been disproportionately affected and do not possess the capacity to effectively respond.

The VP further detailed that Tanzania has put forward ambitious targets on both adaptation and mitigation through Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).

"The government spends an average of USD 500 million per annum on adaptation measures and up to 3 per cent of its GDP on mitigation and building community resilience. With the help of the international community, we are committed to continually update our NDCs and making important progress to tackle climate change," he said.

He noted that most of the developing countries have insufficient fiscal space and weak debt sustainability status to address increasing demand for climate resilient interventions.

Dr Mpango said addressing the climate crisis requires reliable access to climate finance.

He called on the international community to live up to its commitments made under the Paris Agreement.

Enhanced capacity building, technology transfer, support for adaptation and mitigation measures, as well as creation of independent loss and damage financial facility must be implemented in order to scale up the fight against climate change, he said.

Meanwhile, the VP commended the United Nations Educational and Scientific Organisation (UNESCO) for historic declaration that designed July 7 as the World Kiswahili Language Day which was celebrated for the first time this year.

He applauded the efforts of the United Nations in promoting multilingualism as a core value, essential in achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the African Union Agenda 2063.

-Daily News.

Tanzania: No Cause for Alarm On Eacop Execution - Govt

Dodoma — THE government has assured Development Partners that implementation of the ongoing East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) is considerably concerned with human rights and major environmental and climate risks, insisting that there was no cause for alarm at all.

The government assurance comes after the EU Parliament on Thursday last week adopted a resolution seeking to force Uganda, Tanzania and the Total Energies SE to delay the project, terming it as a setback to socioeconomic progress of both Tanzania and Uganda.

They also called on the governments of Uganda and Tanzania to initiate concrete measures to ensure that authorities, security forces and policies respect and comply with human rights standards.

However, when winding up the ninth meeting of the eighth parliamentary session here, Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa said the two governments (Uganda and Tanzania) had made a thorough Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) of the mega project to ensure that it does not cause any negative impacts to beneficiaries.

Once completed, the Uganda-Tanzania pipeline will be the world's longest heated oil pipeline, stretching 1,443 kilometers (896 miles).

"Some Development Partners have been expressing their suspicions in the implementation of this project, especially on issues of environment and human rights, but our assessment is clear, that all such issues had been well considered prior to the implementation of the project," he noted.

According to the Premier, in Tanzania alone, the project was directly involving about 9,513 people and several institutions that were directly affected by the project when it came to relocation.

He was quick to point out that only 331 households (equivalent to 3.5per cent) would be physically relocated. He said that the entire exercise directly engaged all Project Affected Persons (PAPs), including commercial and government institutions to choose either to be paid compensation in cash or to be built modern houses.

"We offered a choice between replacement housing (generally of higher standard than the existing dwelling) and cash compensation, and around 85 per cent of the PAPs had elected for replacement housing, and construction of these replacement houses is ongoing," he clarified.

Mr Majaliwa added that the construction of modern houses was still ongoing, where 37 out of 309 had been fully completed and handed over to respective households. He insisted further that 55 houses were at different finishing stages while 217 houses were at the preliminary stages of construction.

"I want to state categorically that the governments of Tanzania and Uganda respectively want to ensure all stakeholders, including the EU Parliament that this project is implemented by considering all local and international legislations, transparency, environment and climate risks, ecological and social issues, gender and human rights at large," Mr Majaliwa said.

Early this week, Tanzania's Ambassador to Belgium, Jestas Nyamanga said the country is preparing an official statement to be presented to the European Union Parliament for clarification on the implementation of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP).

He said the embassy will submit to the EU an official statement that clarifies execution of the whole project that covers 1,443kms from Hoima (Uganda) to Chongoleani, Tanga in Tanzania.

"The EU Parliament was misinformed on some of the facts that made them reach such a resolution, we shall clarify all the issues to them," he said.

Also in Uganda, lawmakers were opposed to the resolution, among them Ugandan Minister of State for International Relations, Henry Okello-Oryem, who was quoted by the media in Uganda saying EU lawmakers should transact diplomatic business based on mutual respect.

"The resolution is unfortunate because most of those people who voted 'Yes' don't have any clue about the terrain of Africa. So, they don't want Africa to develop its natural resources and yet it's the only way to solve some of our problems," he said.

In its resolution, the EU legislature pointed out that nearly 118,000 people are affected by their homes being destroyed to facilitate the construction of access roads or the processing plant.

The resolution explains further that other people have had all or part of their land requisitioned and have lost the free use of their properties.

-Daily News.

South Africa: Cabinet Briefed On Eskom's Plans to Avoid Load Shedding

Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan has briefed Cabinet on the capacity of Eskom to mitigate the intermittent load shedding.

This comes after President Cyril Ramaphosa and his Cabinet met to follow up on interventions to end load shedding and several other issues.

According to a Cabinet statement following its virtual meeting on Wednesday, Cabinet said it also received a progress report from the newly-appointed Technical Committee of the National Energy Crisis Committee.

"Further announcements will be made following the conclusion of the intensive deliberations of these reports," the statement read.

South Africa has been experiencing high levels of load shedding for the past two weeks as the State power utility Eskom battles to keep the lights due to numerous plant breakdowns.

"Cabinet expressed regret at the disruption and inconvenience caused by load shedding to businesses and households, particularly happening at the time when government is engaged with the interventions announced by the President in July 2022."

Delivering his Heritage Day message, President Ramaphosa said in the recent two weeks, the country has been seeing a rise in load shedding, which is disrupting lives and the economy and causing havoc from a social and health point.

However, he told citizens that government was dealing with the crisis head-on.

"Even as we face these challenges as South Africans as we have done in the past. We have persevered and I ask once again, let us persevere," he said.

"The challenge is being addressed. It's a complex one and we will be speaking soon about the various measures that we are taking to make sure that we address this challenge."

-SAnews.gov.za.

Malawians Welcome Government's U.S.$50m Credit From Arab Bank for Fuel Importation

Malawians have taken up on various social media platforms to applaud the government for successfully securing a US$50 million credit from the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa (Badea) for fuel purchase and importation, saying this would improve the fuel situation in the country.

Malawi has been experiencing sporadic scarcity of fuel due to what National Oil Company of Malawi (Nocma) and Malawi Energy Regulatory Authority (Mera) officials say was due to forex scarcity.

This comes just a week after President Dr Lazarus Chakwera assured the nation that the fuel situation would normalise following the line of credit of the US$50 million from Badea.

Minister of Finance Sosten Gwengwe said the National Oil Company of Malawi (NOCMA) has secured the credit on behalf of the government of Malawi.

He said the board of Badea has approved that the country can start accessing the funds which are to be used in the importation of fuel into the country.

Gwengwe said this is the amount President Chakwera announced that Malawi will be getting from Badea before his departure to United States of America ,where he is attending the United Nations General Assembly.

The finance minister has also indicated that the government is still discussing with other regional banks to open to Petroleum Importers Limited (PIL) a similar credit line to ensure stable supply of fuel in the country.

This comes as the fuel situation in the country has tremendously improved.

-Nyasa Times.

Kenya: Most Consumers to Continue Shopping Online Post-Pandemic - Report

Nairobi — A new survey on consumer perceptions and behaviours towards brands conducted by the Madrid-based global communications agency, MARCO, revealed many people in Sub-Saharan started buying online with the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and will continue to do so in the future.

The "MARCO Research: Post-Covid Consumer Behaviour" survey, was carried out in Kenya, South Africa, and the Ivory Coast from May to June 2022 with a total sample of 14,200 consumers using an online methodology with representative permission marketing-based sampling carried out by CINT.

The survey says 85 per cent of respondents in Kenya said they are regular online shoppers, 99 per cent said they will continue to do so in the future.

In Ivory Coast, 75 per cent said they are regular online shoppers with 98 per cent to continue buying online in the future. 87 per cent of respondents from South Africa are regular online shoppers, and 99 per cent reported they will continue buying online.

"Since the pandemic, we have adopted a global consciousness, inevitably reinforced by digitization. This global commitment to soft values has become a key to the brand strategy of companies, advertisers, and public institutions," said Didier Lagae, CEO of MARCO Group.

The survey found that respondents in Kenya (94 percent), Ivory Coast (63 percent), and South Africa (84 percent) respectively reported having been affected by the pandemic.

With people staying at home, TV was found to be the most reliable source of information among 79 per cent of the respondents in Kenya and 74 per cent in both the Ivory Coast and South Africa. This was followed closely by Facebook and Whatsapp.

According to the survey, brand sustainability is increasingly becoming an important factor to consider when buying a product.

In addition, survey respondents preferred a brand that is responsible as opposed to that which is trendy, as evidenced by the feedback from 85 per cent of the respondents in Kenya, 82 per cent in the Ivory Coast, and 88 per cent in South Africa.

Environmental conservation is also given prominence, with 92 per cent of respondents in South Africa preferring brands that care about the environment.

Kenya and Ivory Coast had 86 and 87 per cent respectively of the respondents rooting for environmental conservation.

"The findings from this survey reaffirm that the current consumer trends are unlikely to change any time soon, and in response to this, companies all over the world are investing heavily to meet increased demand for environmental awareness from brands. The onus remains on businesses to tackle these corresponding revolutions in consumer behaviour. We need to focus our efforts on models that have sustainability at their very core," said Mimi Kalinda, Co-founder, and CEO of Africa Communications Media Group (ACG)/MARCO.

In terms of consumption of digital media, podcasts have become popular, with 69 per cent of respondents in Kenya and 68 per cent in South Africa listening to them.

However, they are not as popular in the Ivory Coast, where only 37 per cent of the respondents reported listening to them.

Whereas investment in cryptocurrencies is gaining traction in other parts of the world, it seems not to have attracted much attention in Africa as only 50 per cent of respondents in Kenya, 46 per cent in South Africa, and 53 per cent in Ivory Coast have invested in cryptocurrencies.

-Capital FM.

Africa: To Reach Net Zero the World Still Needs Mining. After 26 Years, Here's What I've Learned About This 'Evil' Industry

On the wooded hill above the Stan Terg lead and zinc mine in Kosovo, there is an old concrete diving platform looming over what was once an open-air swimming pool. Before the break-up of Yugoslavia, people who worked at the mine would bring their families here to swim, sunbathe on the wide terrace with its view across the valley, and picnic among the trees. Now the pool is slowly disappearing into the forest, the view obscured by birch saplings.

I am with Peter*, an Albanian mine worker who used to come up here with his friends before the war began in 1998. Back then, Serbs and Albanians would use the pool and nearby tennis courts together, but there are no Serb mining families here now. Two decades on, the ruination in the landscape still seems unsettling - a reminder for Peter that something valuable has been lost. "I don't know what the hell happened here," he says.

As we walk along a winding path he points to a cluster of blue flowers, little starbursts of colour nestled in the dead bracken. "That's a sign there are metals underneath," he tells me. They are a quiet reminder of the ore-rich rock that continues to disrupt life in this uneasy corner of Kosovo.

Mines like Stan Terg seem to lurk in the public imagination as remote places that are dangerous, dirty, damaging, violent and destructive. They pollute streams, corrupt politicians, degrade communities and explode indigenous artefacts.

Or they are places where bad people go - those who exploit and extract at the expense of others, human and nonhuman, and are not concerned about the cost. We seem to prefer not to think about them unless we have to.

This story is part of Conversation Insights

The Insights team generates long-form journalism and is working with academics from different backgrounds who have been engaged in projects to tackle societal and scientific challenges.

And yet, we can't live our modern lives without mining. We may slowly be turning our backs on fossil fuels, but what about all the other geological resources with which our lives are entangled? The mined ore in our mobile phones - those palm-size assemblages of cobalt, lithium, copper, manganese and tungsten. The lead and zinc in our car batteries, the aluminium in our bicycles, the steel in our buildings, and the copper in the hidden networks of cabling that hold our worlds together.

The problem of mining is one for all of us. But what sort of problem is it?

Mining and me

My first encounter with mining came when I worked as a television news journalist for ITN in Moscow. It was 1993, and I was travelling with two colleagues across Russia doing some filming ahead of the upcoming parliamentary elections. We had spent the day in a dilapidated helicopter tracking the Trans-Siberian Express as it wound its way through the birch forests below us. The day ended with an emergency landing in a snow field and a lift back to the town of Irkutsk in a truck.

That evening, we met a group of British men in a gloomy hotel bar. None of them spoke Russian or seemed to have travelled far from their beer glasses. It turned out they were mining engineers on their way to some remote operation further north, pulled to the heart of Siberia by whatever strange thing that mine promised them. Money? Promotion? Easy sex? Theirs wasn't a world I wanted to be part of.

Little did I know. Two years later, overwhelmed after the war in Chechnya, undone by a conflict with a colleague and reeling from a failed relationship, I fell out of my journalistic life and landed in a small seaside town in Namibia with a baby daughter and a man I'd married but barely knew. He was a mining engineer who drove 60 kilometres inland each morning to the uranium mine that had operated there since 1976.

Suddenly everything about my life - where I lived, who I met, what I did, how I felt - was mediated by a vast, contentious, spiralled hole in an ancient desert that most people preferred not to think about. I was a white mining wife sucked into a strange world of bake sales, coffee mornings and housing officers who matched the quality of homes offered with the importance of our husbands' jobs. We were not at the top of the pile.

On our first weekend, my husband's throat was cut by three young men trying to break into the small, terraced house we had been allotted. He saved his own life by drawing on his training with the Royal Marines, holding his slashed neck together, keeping his pulse low and only collapsing when he made it into the back of the ambulance.

The police told us the men were from Angola, drawn to this area because of the uranium and the wealth it had created. You can't live near a mine without being aware of the inequalities it encourages.

Since those early days in Namibia, we have moved from mine to mine around the world, making and remaking our lives in the US, South Africa, Australia, Canada, Mongolia, Serbia, then back to Canada again. With each move, I have thought more about the complexities, controversies and conflicts that surround resource extraction. Were we making our own lives at the expense of others?

Whether it's uranium in Namibia, lead and zinc in Kosovo or copper in the Gobi desert, all geological entities become disruptive once they are mapped out and given value. Earlier in 2022, Rio Tinto - the world's second-largest metals and mining corporation - had its exploration licences revoked by the government of Serbia after thousands of people took to the streets, demanding that the development of a lithium mine should stop on environmental grounds.

We left Belgrade in 2018, before the project became controversial, but for seven years we had been deeply involved with the complexities of mining in the Balkans. My husband led the Rio Tinto team in Serbia, and I was working on my PhD research at Stan Terg exploring the relationship between mining, conflict and peace. We would be on the wrong side of public sentiment if we lived and worked there now. That's an uncomfortable feeling - not because it makes me think my association with mining puts me on the moral low ground, but because it's frustrating.

No easy answers

The mining industry is changing, driven not just by international standards and external pressures but by internal forces too. I've met botanists, ornithologists, ecologists, archaeologists, former teachers, people who used to work for NGOs, and a host of others in the industry who are all, in their own ways, wondering how to improve things. That's not to argue that power rests in their hands, but there is more in common between some of the people who work within mining and those who oppose it than might be imagined.

The frustration is that focusing entirely on the environmental and social harms caused by mining risks avoiding the true extent of the challenge mining presents us with, and the complex ways we are all tied up in it because of our consumer appetites.

If building a lithium mine is unacceptable in Serbia as a means to satisfy our demands, what does that mean for the lithium-rich salt flats in Chile and the Indigenous groups living there who are concerned about the impact of mining on their water sources? Or for the lithium under Mariupol in Ukraine that was attracting international attention before the war?

When Serbia's tennis hero Novak Djokovic tweeted photos of the protests along with a declaration that we need "clean air", I wanted to rest my forehead on my desk. He's right, of course we need clean air. But the lithium required to achieve it must urgently come from somewhere.

The problem is in many sectors we need more mining, not less, for the transition to a zero carbon future. The World Bank has predicted that the production of graphite, lithium and cobalt will have to increase five-fold by 2050 if climate targets are to be met, and the demand for lithium-ion batteries already has analysts describing lithium as "white oil".

In April 2022, US president Joe Biden used a cold war-era law - the 1950 Defense Production Act - to boost the production of lithium in the US, along with nickel and other minerals needed to power our electric vehicles.

Similarly, copper is integral for key large-scale decarbonisation technologies such as offshore wind projects. Working out how to source these materials has been made more urgent by the war in Ukraine, and the need to reduce dependency not only on Russian oil and gas but on its minerals and metals too.

After 26 years, I have learned that all mining operations - actual and potential - require us to pay attention to what is most difficult about our lives: how what we consume relates to the future of the planet and the lives of those we share it with. The problem of mining is not just one of how we should extract, but how we should live.

A story of optimism and attachment

The people I met at Stan Terg in 2018 told me a story about mining that was not just about dirt, degradation and pollution, but also their enduring attachment to the mine and what it promises.

Stan Terg is the oldest mine within the huge, decaying Trepča industrial complex - an ecology of mines and related infrastructure concentrated in the northern part of Kosovo. This small mine tucked away up a wooded valley, ten kilometres north-east of the town of Kosovska Mitrovica, was first developed by a British mining company in the 1920s, shortly after Serbia's reconquest of Kosovo.

When the British travel writer Rebecca West visited here in 1937, she was enchanted by the English-style mining cottages with their unguarded front gardens and windows facing the road, reflecting the setting sun. To West, these houses expressed confidence that the mine would bring not only prosperity but also peace to this troubled region. Its Scottish general manager employed both Serbs and Albanians and was certain they would work well together. "This country," he told West, "is getting over its past nicely."

Nearly 90 years later, the ruins of the houses that delighted West still exist above the Stan Terg mine, but they are pitted with bullet holes. While the war between Serbia and Kosovo in the late 1990s was not (ostensibly) over natural resources, a strike by the Albanian mineworkers at Stan Terg in 1989 was part of the political upheaval that preceded the violent break-up of Yugoslavia and ultimately led to Kosovo's declaration of independence in 2008.

Now this part of Kosovo is uneasily divided. Four Serb-dominated municipalities close to the border are still de facto ruled by Belgrade. The town of Kosovska Mitrovica, once the bustling, multicultural, industrial heart of this region, has been bisected - Serbs largely to the north of the river Ibar with their language, dinar currency and orientation towards Belgrade; Kosovan Albanians to the south.

But it is not just people who are divided here. Trepča's smelter, flotation plant and three northernmost mines are also under Belgrade's control. Settling the future of the complex is an explosive issue: a mining complex that once promised to bring people together is now pushing them apart - lending its geological heft to a conflict that has become intractable.

Yet the Kosovan-Albanian workers at Stan Terg are still optimistic that their mine can change things for the better. "I feel hope when I go down the mine," one tells me. Another says it is a pleasure to work in the place that will one day make the economy better. A third describes the feeling he had when he returned to the mine after the war once the Serbs had left: "There was no happiness like it. It wasn't just that I was going to get paid, but Kosovo was going to get stronger too."

This is not an easy optimism to hold on to, however. It is contradicted by the ruination around us - the destroyed cinema, collapsing hotel and crumbling diving board - and by the mineworkers' acknowledgement that life is not how they expected it would be. A tearful man worries that he made a mistake when he brought his family back here after the war. Another struggles to breathe because of the damage to his lungs. "The mine produces cripples," he tells me.

Yet despite the destruction, pollution and disappointment, the mineworkers still insist that the lead and zinc rich rock beneath them is a "gift from God", and that it will bring them all prosperity in the end.

Talking with these mineworkers, I realise that what is important here is the painful and profound process of creating worlds and hoping they will last; coping with the disappointment when they don't; and remaining optimistic that a mine will deliver some sort of good life amid the evidence it never has - at least not for long.

A problem of world-making

Mining is not just a problem of extraction and the environmental degradation associated with it. It is also a problem of world-making. What sort of worlds do we want our geological resources to create for us? Who are they for? How long will they last? And who, and what, might suffer because of them?

It is tempting to think this problem is a local one - something that happens "over there" on the shores of an Arctic fjord, in the Namibian desert, in a taiga forest in the heart of Siberia, or in semi-recognised geopolitical entities with travel advisories like northern Kosovo.

Yet metals and minerals promise to make the world different for all of us. The lithium in our antidepressants. The stainless steel in the needles of our syringes that deliver vaccines, anaesthetics, Botox. The aluminium in our heat pumps, the copper in our wind turbines, the titanium in the Mars Exploration Rovers and the gold in the James Webb telescope. They all bring certain futures into view and allow us to feel confident about them: that we won't be sad, that we won't age, that we can achieve net-zero carbon and look after the planet - even that we can find an alternative world to escape to.

But they do so at a cost. The global hypodermic needles market is estimated to reach US$4.5bn by 2030. Europe's aluminium smelters are facing an energy crisis while China is ramping up its production based on an increase in coal production. The war in Ukraine is threatening to disrupt titanium supplies. Demand for copper is predicted to double to 50 million tonnes by 2035, but supply is unlikely to keep up and the net-zero transition might be delayed as a result.

According to Dan Yergin, global vice-chairman of the S&P business intelligence group, we can't assume that copper and other metals and minerals "will just be there". New geopolitical worlds are likely to emerge in the rush to acquire them.

Like the miners at Stan Terg, are we attached to an idea of the world that is not the same as the one we live in?

For now, the lithium and borates-rich rock under the Jadar valley in Serbia is being pulled in all directions. People interested in protecting the environment want it to stay in the ground. A local farmer understandably wants to preserve his land. Yet we need to unearth vast of amounts of lithium from somewhere if we are to swap our petrol cars for electric ones.

Meanwhile mining company shareholders expect their dividend cheques, politicians want to be re-elected, people need to feel they are listened to and have some control, and everyone, in their own way, wants to prosper. This geological body, like any other, is asking questions that are hard to answer. Whose future counts? And at what cost?

At the bottom of their world

Before leaving Stan Terg I travel down to the bottom of the mine, three-quarters of a kilometre underground. The mineworkers - all men - have told me I cannot properly understand their world unless I experience it.

I watch the wet walls of the mineshaft slip past as we descend, notice the drips of water on my helmet and a deep bass hum coming from somewhere I cannot place. I am travelling back in geological time, past rocks that are increasingly ancient as we descend. For we don't just possess tiny pieces of Kosovo, Siberia or Alaska in the smartphones in our pockets, but elements of the deep past too - minute reminders that the world we create with them should be enduring.

I feel disoriented at the bottom of the mine, but the workers are intimate with this place. They tell me they feel good down here. I watch as they stride off along the tunnel, their boots splashing in the water.

For them, the rock around us is like a human body with veins of minerals and the capacity to expand and contract as if it is breathing. They listen to the noises it makes and understand what it says to them. After so many years, they know the sound of danger.

But this mine also holds their memories of the days when Serbs and Albanians worked together here before the war, and of the trust that emerged between them deep underground. "There are no ethnicities in a mine," one worker tells me, "just miners." Another says he'd like to see his old colleagues again, although he knows not everyone would agree with him.

There is optimism here, of sorts: "The problem started in Trepča and the solution will be found here too," I am told. "If we learn how to develop Kosovo together, peace will happen."

Yet for all their familiarity with this place, it still has the power to surprise them. Every day they find something ancient and unexpected sparkling in the light of their headlamps. There are thousands of breathtakingly beautiful crystals down here, and none of them are the same.

They are powerful objects, these crystals. I have a collection on my windowsill at home: palm-sized silver and white spines of quartz, pyrite and a host of other materials - disrupting what we think we know about mining, what we might expect to find at the bottom of a lead and zinc mine in the context of conflict, and how people might think and feel when they are down there. There is more to this world, they seem to say, than we might imagine.

*Research participant's name changed to protect their anonymity

For you: more from our Insights series:

'Too afraid to have kids' - how BirthStrike for Climate lost control of its political message

Climate scientists: concept of net zero is a dangerous trap

Beyond GDP: changing how we measure progress is key to tackling a world in crisis - three leading experts

How a Soviet miner from the 1930s helped create today's intense corporate workplace culture

To hear about new Insights articles, join the hundreds of thousands of people who value The Conversation's evidence-based news. Subscribe to our newsletter.

Bridget Storrie, Post-Doctoral Teaching Fellow, Institute for Global Prosperity, UCL

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