Modern Mining May 2019

COUNTRY FOCUS: BOTSWANA

sale while the exact status of Lerala – which has had several owners since being opened – is currently unclear. It was reportedly sold on auction for US$8,1 million in May last year but the deal subsequently fell through. Whether Lerala will ever become a viable mine remains to be seen. The diamonds it produces are typi- cally low in value, it has only a limited life of several years left and certainly it is unlikely to ever be a substantial mine. Nevertheless, under the right market conditions and assuming the use of grid power rather than the gensets used by its previous owners, it could be profitable. It is reported to have a probable reserve of 5 Mt at a grade of 31 cpht and an inferred resource at the same grade of approximately 10 Mt. Moving on to base metals, Botswana has had a torrid time with this sector of its mining industry, with the BCL copper/nickel opera- tion at Selebi-Phikwe, the nickel mine at Tati

Nickel near Francistown (which was owned by Norilsk Nickel (Nornickel) but bought by BCL in a failed deal which is now the sub- ject of a dispute between Nornickel and the Government of Botswana), the Mowana mine north of Francistown, and the Boseto copper mine in the Kalahari Copperbelt all having closed down over the past several years, with the loss of several thousand jobs. The good news is that there is a resurgence of activity in the Kalahari Copperbelt (as has already been well reported in Modern Mining ) which could see the region – which is a corridor of cop- per/silver mineralisation running south-west of Maun to Ghanzi and beyond – restor- ing Botswana’s standing as a copper (if not a nickel) producer. The bigger of the two copper/silver mines planned for the Kalahari Copperbelt is the Khoemacau (or Zone 5) mine of US-based

The processing facility of the Ghaghoo mine of Gem Diamonds in the Central Kalahari. This photo was taken in 2014. The mine was placed on care and maintenance in 2017 (photo: Gem Diamonds).

May 2019  MODERN MINING  37