African economic superpowers, Nigeria and South Africa exploring collaborative ventures to develop artisanal and small-scale gold mining in Nigeria.
Although, South Africa is featured as the largest gold miner on the continent and the sixth largest miner of the mineral globally;
Nigeria is not buoyant in mining gold and majority of gold mining that takes place in the country are carried out by artisans.
The partnership will see Nigeria acquire mining equipment and expertise from South Africa owing to the many artisans operating in the country’s developing mining sector, Nigeria’s Minister of Steel and Development, Musa Sada said.
“Our focus is on gold because we have a lot of artisanal and small-scale miners,” Sada told News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja.
“We realised that we are wasting a lot of resources and not getting as much as we should from mining. So, we need to improve on our mining technology and commodity pricing,” he explained further.
Most of the Nigeria’s gold deposits are found in the northern states. Nigeria recently surpassed South Africa as the continent’s biggest economy after a recent economy rebasing.
Gold mining constitutes less than one percent to the country’s GDP
