As someone who holds a paltry number of Rio Tinto shares (disclosure done) I read with a certain uneasiness Dryblower’ piece about Rio and what is going on in Guinea.

Dryblower, who has a pretty good ear for trouble, is rightly concerned in his column last Monday here on MiningNews.net about what might happen in Guinea and the implications that might hold for Rio‘s iron ore project which has already had a rocky ride.

It’s one of the few countries in West Africa one just doesn’t trust. Given bad enough times, any of the countries in the region could blow up (as we saw on a minor scale in Burkina Faso earlier this year), but Guinea would be the short-odds favourite (even without any provocation).

One must, by contrast, allow oneself a little more hope when it comes to Liberia ¬– although to have expressed such a view just a decade ago would have categorised you as quite off the planet. Of course, the potential for implosion mentioned above does exist but there are signs for optimism.

Two Saturdays ago BHP Billiton sponsored the first ever marathon to be held in Monrovia.

Depending on which account you read, the winner of the men’s race was either an Ethiopian or an American, but there seems to be general local media agreement that the women’s race was won by a 16-year-old Liberian.

What is particularly interesting – if it is true, which seems unlikely – is that the media carried reports of a senior BHP executive (man) taking part alongside Liberia’s president (female).

Now, as President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was born in 1938, and appears amply proportioned, this running business seems to raise one’s journalistic scepticism.

Let’s put the most likely construction on the story: that the BHP man and the president were at the event, and at least watched the runners, or possibly drove before or behind them.

They even jogged a little. Who knows? It doesn’t matter. What does matter is that BHP, which has its iron ore ambitions in the country, seems to be on good terms with the government and the government with it.

Just this week we had news that Liberia, in the form of ArcelorMittal, is about to make its first iron ore shipment since the 1989-2003 civil war came to a close.

Which, finally, brings me to the point this week.

Mining in Africa isn’t new – it’s just that we have started over the past decade reporting about it, and investors have lost their fear of the continent.

So we tend to forget that much was happening long before your favourite junior ventured into Mali, or one of the Congos, or Angola.

So, as BHP and (at the other end of the scale) West Peak Iron beaver away, it might be useful to store away a little background information.

Back in 1965 there were four iron ore mines operating in Liberia. The Liberian Mining Co, a subsidiary of Republic Iron & Steel of Cleveland, Ohio, made the country’s first iron ore shipment in 1951 from the Bomi Hills mine. The country’s second mine came into being in 1961.

An assessment in 1965 by Britain’s Geographic Association pulled together quite a glowing picture of the iron ore potential of Liberia, their work now having been borne out by all the exploration and mine development activity in the country. (Someone connected with another project in Liberia told me about a year ago after a visit to Monrovia that one of the most frequently spotted sights in the capital were vehicles bearing the BHP logo).

But the interesting aspect is looking back at the effect the iron ore projects had on Liberia itself.

The Geographic Association found that the massive influx of capital had brought rising employment and incomes, as well as roads, railways and settlement.

Subsistence farmers became mine workers with, at Bomi Hills, 2500 locals employed and joined in a new town by more than 7500 relatives. There were also 115 Lebanese-owned shops catering for the needs of all these people.

It was also to go sour a decade on. And the relocation of so many non-working dependents hit food production in the areas whence they had come, and the economy became dangerously dependent on just a handful of big mines.

With luck this time, though, the big miners like ArcelorMittal and BHP will have learned from mistakes made by their earlier counterparts, the government at the time.

If so, Liberia stands a better chance of becoming a success story for all concerned. Which is more than you can say for Guinea.