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ARTICLE · 15 OCTOBER 2019

African Saga Continues

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Bylined article by Rachel Speight on resource nationalism.

South AfricaEnergy and Natural Resources
Rachel Speight
Rachel Speight
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Not a week seems to pass without another story appearing about an African country jockeying to increase its share of the wealth represented by its mineral deposits. The prevalent risk these days is no longer that a government will expropriate mining assets outright - as in the postcolonial days when African (as well as Latin American) governments in the 1960s and 1970s would take over mining assets wholesale. Examples of this are the 51% nationalisation of all foreign-owned mines in Zambia in 1969 and the expropriation of mining assets in Sierra Leone. Nowadays, so-called 'resource nationalism' takes many different forms and typically occurs indirectly through, for example, increasing tax pressures, export restrictions, tougher local content requirements (including requirements to process minerals in-country), more stringent regulatory requirements, contract reviews and a general increase in government involvement in the sector.

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