There are two kinds of people – those who invested in bitcoin early and have made a fortune; and those who wished they had. But the real story behind this amazing cryptocurrency isn’t its rapid rise in value or...
1. It is Africa’s second-largest gold producer
In 2016, Ghana produced 90 tons of gold; only South Africa – with 140 tons – produced more gold on the continent. The gold mining industry accounts for five percent of the country’s...
1. It is the heaviest element in the universe
Uranium is heavy, and is nearly three times as dense as iron. This makes it atomically unstable, which contributes to it being radioactive. Uranium’s natural radioactivity – the emission of particles...
(1) Your friend phones you at midnight with car trouble. What do you do?
Go back to sleep
Send them a taxi service’s number
Call your two best friends to all go together to rescue them
Hop in your...
1. It is a by-product of copper mining
You can’t mine cobalt; you can only get it as a by-product of copper mining. So, where there’s copper, there’s cobalt. The Copperbelt, which runs through the Central African Republic, the Democratic...
1. It’s the world’s second-largest diamond producer
Botswana is the world’s second-largest producer of diamonds, after Russia. The country is forecast to produce 22 million carats in 2017, which is more than a quarter of world production by value. Botswana...
Technology and innovation, along with the relentless search for new mineral deposits, are taking mining into unchartered waters. Quite literally, in this case, as mining companies look to begin harvesting minerals that can be found on the seafloor.
Barely five...
This striking graph confirms what Zambians may have suspected, both intuitively and through personal experience – it’s mining that is the main driver of the economy and helps to put money in people’s pockets.
GDP per capita is a country’s...
Asteroids are huge lumps of rock – some barely a few hundred metres in length – hurtling through space; and they are focusing minds here on planet Earth because they are extremely rich in minerals, from cobalt to platinum.
A...
1. It is very rich in minerals
The DRC has the largest reserves of coltan and is the biggest producer of the metal, which is needed in almost all electronic devices. The DRC produces more than half of the world’s...
