Month: February 2023

South Africa hosted the world’s biggest mining investment conference this week, with industry experts in attendance saying the U.S. and China are in a race for the critical minerals — such as cobalt and lithium — that will likely power the projected transition to clean energy.

African countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo have some of the largest deposits of these resources, but China currently dominates the supply chain as well as their refinement and the U.S. wants to reduce its reliance on the Asian giant.

In his remarks at the mining conference in Cape Town this week, U.S. Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment Jose Fernandez hinted at this saying, “I don’t need to remind you of what happens when the supply chain breaks down or when we depend on a single supplier. We lived it during the COVID pandemic, and this is a vulnerability that we need to solve together.”

Fernandez — who did not mention China by name — noted that electric vehicles are expected to command half the global market by 2030 and that demand for lithium is expected to increase 42-fold by 2040. China is responsible for some 80 percent of the world’s lithium refining.

Tony Carroll, the director of Acorus Capital and an international adviser to the conference known as the Africa Mining Indaba, told VOA the session came at a critical time for the West.

The Chinese made it a “priority to corner the market for critical minerals about two decades ago and supported that strategy with massive public diplomacy and infrastructure investments into Africa — most of which [came] via long-term debt. The West woke up to this strategy too late and have been scrambling ever since,” he said.

Rare earth minerals are essential for electric vehicle production and expanding the production of green technologies. However, their extraction can come at an environmental or social cost to African countries that have big deposits.

Fernandez echoed remarks made by Pope Francis on his recent trip to Congo denouncing “economic colonialism” in Africa, which could be seen as a swipe at Beijing. He also assured African countries the United States would respect “environmental, social, and governance standards.”

“While late to the game, the U.S. has awakened with more ambition in mining and processing and building alliances with like-minded partners,” said Carroll, who is also an adjunct professor in the African studies program at Johns Hopkins University.

A first-time sponsor of the Mining Indaba this year was Chinese company Zijin, one of the largest mining groups in the world with interests in lithium, copper and other metals.

Asked for comment by VOA on whether China is now in a race for rare earth metals with the U.S., as well as other questions about Chinese mining interests in Africa, the PR manager of South Africa Zijin Platinum said the CEO was unable to respond before the deadline for this article.

African governments are now trying to get the best deals for their people. Namibia’s Mines Minister Tom Alweendo told Reuters at the Cape Town conference that his country is insisting that all lithium mined in Namibia has to be processed in the country.

Similarly, DRC President Felix Tshisekedi, who was one of the key speakers at the mining conference, has been demanding better terms from China for several years. China sources the majority of its cobalt from DRC, which produces some 70 percent of the world’s total.

Despite its vast mineral resources, Congo is one of the world’s least developed countries and Tshisekedi said in January it hadn’t benefited from a $6.2 billion minerals-for-infrastructure contract with China signed by his predecessor.

“The Chinese, they’ve made a lot of money and made a lot of profit from this contract,” Tshisekedi told Bloomberg at the World Economic Forum in Davos. “The Democratic Republic of Congo has derived no benefit from it. There’s nothing tangible, no positive impact, I’d say, for our population.”

“Now our need is simply to re-balance things in a way that it becomes win-win,” he added.

There are signs Tshisekedi could be moving toward the West.

The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden organized the Minerals Security Partnership last year as a way of diversifying supply chains. Partners include Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the European Union. At its first meeting last year, the DRC was one of the non-partner nations in attendance.

Then at Biden’s U.S.-Africa Summit in December, the DRC and Zambia inked a deal with the U.S. to jointly develop the supply chain for electric vehicle batteries.

“Dependency on China for rare earths is viewed with alarm,” said Jay Truesdale, CEO of the risk advisory firm Veracity Worldwide, and a speaker at the Indaba. “Given that Beijing has the means to severely restrict access to these minerals, in the event of a geopolitical crisis it could choose to use its market dominance to cripple non-Chinese manufacturers in such sectors as electronics, automotive manufacturing, aerospace, and renewable energy.”

Besides the rising tensions between China and the West in Africa, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will also force mining companies to make hard decisions, Truesdale said.

“The war in Ukraine has placed greater scrutiny on Russian mining activities across the continent. Russia benefits from a lack of transparency and weak governance where its mining companies operate. African governments are now more closely observing how Moscow trades promises of greater security for deeper access to mineral resources and the state capture that can result,” he told VOA.

Source: Voice of America

After a European Union summit ending February 10 that offered strong support for Ukraine — and calls for stronger measures against illegal migration — the bloc is now challenged to act on its rhetoric. But on both Ukraine and migration, European member states are not marching in complete lockstep.

EU membership, fighter jets and fences counted among the top three buzzwords of a summit, featuring the standing-ovation presence of Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and talks about curbing a sharp influx of so-called “irregular migrants” from places like Africa.

Zelenskyy got a rousing welcome from European members of parliament and leaders, as he reiterated calls for more weapons and for fast-tracking his country’s EU membership application.

Ukraine’s leader also called for more EU sanctions against Russia — which European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said will shortly become reality.

“First, we will impose sanctions on a number of political and military leaders,” she said. “But also, dear Volodymyr, we listened very carefully to your messages when we visited you last week in Kyiv – we will target [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s propagandists, because their lies are poisoning the public space in Russia and abroad.”

Despite the show of unity, there does not appear more movement on speeding up Ukraine’s accession into the bloc. And while Zelenskyy said some EU countries appeared receptive to sending fighter jets, it is unclear how much support that proposal has within the bloc, with many nations fearing an escalation in the Ukraine conflict.

Speaking to reporters, Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin appeared open to the idea.

When asked if she would rule out fighter jets, Marin responded, “I don’t want to rule out anything in this stage.”

Europe’s traditional heavyweights — France and Germany — were less receptive. French President Emmanuel Macron said he does not rule out sending fighter jets to Ukraine, but that it does not correspond to today’s needs.

In terms of overall weapons deliveries, timing is critical, said Jacob Kirkegaard, a senior analyst at the German Marshall Fund policy institute.

“It is clear, or appears to be clear, that Russian government is determined to push an offensive around the one-year anniversary of the invasion — and hopefully from their point of view before lots of the new western heavy weaponry arrives. And of course, Ukraine has previously said it is their intention to launch their own counter-offensive,” Kirkegaard said.

EU divisions were also apparent on another hot-button issue: migration. European border agency Frontex says last year’s number of so-called irregular migrant crossings into the bloc — 330,000 — was the highest since its 2016 migrant crisis. Many more were asylum-seekers, although EU officials suggest many of those do not merit refugee status.

While the bloc is moving toward tougher policies to curb migration, countries are divided over methods to do it, and whether to use EU funds to build fences — a concept that was largely dismissed not so long ago.

Source: Voice of America

Scientists have a mystery on their hands after the discovery of 330 stone tools about 2.9 million years old at a site in Kenya, along Lake Victoria’s shores, that were used to butcher animals, including hippos, and pound plant material for food.

Which of our prehistoric relatives that were walking the African landscape at the time made them? The chief suspect, researchers said on Thursday in describing the findings, may be a surprise.

The Nyayanga site artifacts represent the oldest-known examples of a type of stone technology, called the Oldowan toolkit, that was revolutionary, enabling our forerunners to process diverse foods and expand their menu. Three tool types were found: hammerstones and stone cores to pound plants, bone and meat, and sharp-edged flakes to cut meat.

To put the age of these tools into perspective, our species Homo sapiens did not appear until roughly 300,000 years ago.

Scientists had long believed Oldowan tools were the purview of species belonging to the genus Homo, a grouping that includes our species and our closest relatives. But no Homo fossils were found at Nyayanga. Instead, two teeth – stout molars – of a genus called Paranthropus were discovered there, an indication this prehistoric cousin of ours may have been the maker.

“The association of these Nyayanga tools with Paranthropus may reopen the case as to who made the oldest Oldowan tools. Perhaps not only Homo, but other kinds of hominins were processing food with Oldowan technology,” said anthropologist Thomas Plummer of Queens College in New York City, lead author of the research published in the journal Science.

The term hominin refers to various species considered human or closely related.

“When our team determined the age of the Nyayanga evidence, the perpetrator of the tools became a ‘whodunit’ in my mind,” said paleoanthropologist and study co-author Rick Potts, director of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History’s Human Origins Program. “There are several possibilities. And except for finding fossilized hand bones wrapped around a stone tool, the originator of the early Oldowan tools may be an unknown for a long time.”

The molars represent the oldest-known fossils of Paranthropus, an upright-walker that combined ape-like and human-like traits, possessing adaptations for heavy chewing, including a skull topped with a bony ridge to which strong jaw muscles were attached, like in gorillas.

Other hominins existing at the time included the genus Australopithecus, known for the famous even-older fossil “Lucy.”

“While some species of nonhuman primates produce technologies that assist in foraging, humans are uniquely dependent on technology for survival,” Plummer said.

All later developments in prehistoric technologies were based on Oldowan tools, making their advent a milestone in human evolution, Potts said. Rudimentary stone tools 3.3 million years old from another Kenyan site may have been an Oldowan forerunner or a technological dead-end.

The Nyayanga site today is a gully on Homa Mountain’s western flank along Lake Victoria in southwestern Kenya. When the tools were made, it was woodland and grassland along a stream, teeming with animals.

Until now, the oldest-known Oldowan examples dated to around 2.6 million years ago, in Ethiopia. The species Homo erectus later toted Oldowan technology as far as Georgia and China.

Cut marks on hippopotamus rib and shin bones at Nyayanga were the oldest-known examples of butchering a very large animal – called megafauna. The researchers think the hippos were scavenged, not hunted. The tools also were used for cracking open antelope bones to obtain marrow and pounding hard and soft plant material.

Fire was not harnessed until much later, meaning food was eaten raw. The researchers suspect the tools were used to pound meat to make it like “hippo tartare.”

“Megafauna provide a super abundance of food,” Plummer said. “A hippopotamus is a big leather sack full of good things to eat.”

Source: Voice of America

Collective Punishment Over Forced Conscription Campaign

(Nairobi) – The Eritrean government has in recent months punished relatives of thousands of alleged draft evaders as part of an intensive forced conscription campaign, Human Rights Watch said today.

Eritrean security forces have been heavily involved in operations in support of the Ethiopian government since the outbreak of conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region in November 2020, and have carried out some of the conflict’s worst abuses. Eritrean authorities have conducted waves of roundups in Eritrea to identify people it considers draft evaders or deserters. Since September 2022, when Ethiopian and Eritrean forces carried out joint offensives in the Tigray region, the Eritrean government has inflicted further repression, punishing family members of those seeking to avoid conscription or recall, to enforce widespread forced mobilization, including of older men. Such punishment has included arbitrary detentions and home expulsions.

“Struggling to fill its dwindling fighting ranks, Eritrea’s government has detained and expelled older people and women with young children from their homes in order to find people it considers draft evaders or deserters,” said Laetitia Bader, deputy Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Eritrea should immediately end its collective punishment of relatives of those who refuse to comply and instead focus on reforming its ruthless indefinite military service system.”

Eritrea has a policy of indefinite national service, including compulsory military conscription, which has been central to the government’s broader repression of its population since the 1998-2001 border war with Ethiopia, and its aftermath.

The statutory national service of 18 months was indefinitely extended to require all male and female adults under age 40 to be available to work at the direction of the state, either in a military or civilian capacity. In practice, adults older than 40 are also forced to serve. Despite the country’s 2018 peace deal with Ethiopia, the government has refused to reform this repressive system.

Once conscripted into the military, young men and women, some still minors, have very few options for discharge. As a result, they risk serious reprisals to escape what a United Nations Commission of Inquiry has characterized as “enslavement.”

Human Rights Watch interviewed 14 people who had recently fled Eritrea, relatives of people affected by the forced conscriptions and reprisals, as well as 11 journalists and other analysts, two of whom were inside Eritrea as the campaign took place. Human Rights Watch did not interview anyone still inside Eritrea for security reasons. Human Rights Watch also reviewed satellite imagery that corroborated important aspects of the accounts of those interviewed through mid-January 2023. In February, Human Rights Watch received reports of the return of some military units that had been sent to fight in Tigray, and of some reservists who had been at the border inside Eritrea.

The latest conscription drive started mid-2022, with the authorities targeting people considered draft evaders, including students who have dropped out of school to evade military training, as well as army deserters, some of whom already had served for years. Then, in mid-September, the government mobilized reservists, primarily men aged 50 through to 60, many of whom had been officially discharged from active military duty but continue to hold arms and are required to conduct guard duties. On September 17, Eritrea’s information minister told the media that only “a tiny number” of reservists were being called up, denying that the entire population was being called up.

During the latest mobilization drive, especially from September onward, the security forces have set up checkpoints throughout urban and rural areas. In addition, by working with the local officials, security forces have gone door to door, ostensibly to confirm eligibility for coupons that grant people access to subsidized goods, but in fact, to also identify draft evaders. They used the visits, people interviewed said, to identify discrepancies between the number of family members the coupon system said should be in a particular home and those of conscription age who were living there, often retaliating against family members who the authorities claimed had failed to track the missing people down.

Older parents as well as women with young children have been temporarily detained for days, some reportedly longer, and have been expelled from their homes during the government’s searches, Human Rights Watch found. A 71-year-old woman was evicted from her home in Asmara, the capital, because she was unable to confirm the whereabouts of one of her sons being sought by the authorities. Another son who lives abroad said:

My mother has some health issues, so the neighbors tried to plead with the authorities not to lock up the house after my first brother turned himself in. But when the second didn’t come, they shut up the house.

An Eritrean woman abroad whose relatives have also been evicted said: “The confiscation of homes, we’ve never seen this before. It’s an act of desperation.”

Despite a November cessation of hostilities agreement, signed between the Ethiopian federal government and Tigrayan authorities, Human Rights Watch continued to receive reports of ongoing roundups and reprisals through early 2023.

Many presumed draft evaders, rounded up near Asmara, were initially taken to the notorious, military-run Adi Abeito prison, northeast of the capital. Satellite imagery Human Rights Watch analyzed shows large crowds of people in the prison yard and surrounding areas of the prison from October 2022 through late January 2023. Relatives reported that many men were taken from the prison to their assigned military unit headquarters in this time period.

“Everyone has always lived with the dreadful feeling of the risk of being conscripted, but this is at a whole different level,” an Asmara resident said.

Some forms of conscription for military service are permitted under international human rights law. However, Eritrea uses violent methods including the threat of penalty and punishment for those who do not participate, and collective punishment of relatives. Officials also show a lack of respect for the right to conscientious objection and provide no opportunity to challenge arbitrary enforcement and the indefinite nature of conscription. These factors constitute abuse, Human Rights Watch said. International human rights law prohibits holding anyone criminally responsible for acts they are not responsible for.

International and regional officials should take concrete measures against Eritrea’s leadership for the ongoing repression. They should ensure ongoing scrutiny by the United Nations Human Rights Council, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, and UN experts.

They should adopt and maintain targeted sanctions against individuals and entities responsible for serious abuses inside Eritrea, as part of broader targeted sanctions for Eritrean and other armed forces responsible for serious abuses in northern Ethiopia, tied to clear human rights benchmarks, Human Rights Watch said. Eritrea’s regional partners, including Horn of Africa and Gulf states, should press Eritrea to ensure meaningful changes to the abusive national service system, which has continued to drive Eritreans into exile.

“Eritreans from all walks of life are bearing the brunt of the government’s repressive tactics,” Bader said. “Eritrea’s regional partners and international actors should take action to end rampant repression.”

Source: Human Rights Watch