Topics will include, but not be limited to, geopolitics, resource nationalism, terrorism, governance, fiscal regimes and the negotiation of terms, international dispute resolution, investment law, treaty law and mineral law (lex mineralis) from which this column takes its name.

This month will take a brief look at Africa. One of my first impressions of Africa was that of West Africa when I landed at Kotoka Airport in Accra in the early 1990s. The air was hot and thick with dust from the Harmattan. The airport was an unwelcoming structure and the officialdom was surly, threatening and corrupt.

Already a seasoned traveller, I knew that with a pocketful of US dollars in small denominations, I could negotiate my way through to the airport exit where I was confronted by a large crowd of people being controlled by frantic policemen with a long canes.

My first thoughts were: What had I done? What was this nihilistic place? I was to be in a town called Obuasi the next day where I had been employed as a lion-tamer; that is, as a general manager of an ailing drilling and mining contracting company beset by problems of poor leadership, a drug culture, pilferage equivalent to 15% of revenue and corruption at all levels from clients to government officials.

We were mining pioneers then. Gold and other minerals were being discovered in potentially vast quantities and my company, which was soon to be taken over by a NASDAQ-listed company, was about to invest huge sums to provide the drilling and mining needs of this new African mining adventure.

Eventually, over the next decade, we grew this company to be one of the largest of its kind in Africa, working in more than 30 African countries; and in many cases, achieving the status of being the largest foreign direct investor in many of these sovereign states.

In those early years, I rarely met anyone in authority, both private and public who wasn’t corrupt, and the sovereign risks were apparent to anyone who cared to evaluate.

More than a quarter of a century has passed now, and the subsequent success of the African mineral regime is well known. 

I am now older and wiser, and have attended most Mining Indabas in Cape Town. Looking back, it was as a result of my tenure in Africa that prompted me to dedicate my career to foreign direct investment (FDI) in the developing world and the mitigation of sovereign risk in all its forms.

Africa has matured along with those who invest in Africa. International and domestic public and corporate attitudes have changed for the better. 

Investment in new resource ventures is now at the lowest in my 40-plus years in this Industry. Africa, as well-endowed as it is, is a victim of this malaise. Looking back, could we, the industry, have done it better? Could Africa have done it better? In hindsight it is easy to be judgmental, but could we have predicted oversupply of various commodities, the regime changes that have taken place throughout the world, the rise of terrorism which has infiltrated some of the target FDI destinations in the Sahel?

Well yes much of it was predictable and predicted by a few of us to those who wanted to listen. The future installments of this column will help to prepare those with an interest; and I look forward to the year to come.

 

Professor Colin Roberts is an international resources geo-strategist, a graduate of the Western Australian School of Mines and holds a string of other qualifications. He is also a chartered petroleum an mining engineer; resources lawyer; international arbitrator, mediator and adjudicator; and he has more than 40 years of multi-disciplinary resource industry experience, most of which has been in the developing world. He began his career started as a diamond and reverse circulation and oil and gas driller. He is now a professor at Curtin University, and was a director of the Centre for Energy, Petroleum and Mineral Law and Policy (CEPMLP), University of Dundee. He now specialises in mitigation of sovereign risk, advising governments in resources law and policy and facilitation of FDI in the resources, energy and infrastructure sectors.