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Will Africa’s metals boom suffer the same curse as oil?

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Mineral wealth: the Moanda region in Gabon may hold as much as a quarter of the world's known deposits of manganese
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Mechanical diggers are hard at work in the bleak landscape of the Moanda open-cast mine in Gabon, using giant jaws to rip out manganese and then dump the ore into trucks with a crash.

“We’re lucky here in Moanda. We find it about five to six metres (about 18 feet) below the surface,” said manager Olivier Kassibi, whose mine yields 36 tonnes of manganese each day.

Element number 25 on the periodic table, manganese has traditionally been perceived as a useful if humdrum material widely employed in steel and alloys.

More recently, though, the silvery metal has gained star status thanks to its emerging role in rechargeable car batteries, helping to wean the world off carbon-spewing fossil fuels.

Decarbonisation of the world economy will take centre stage at the UN’s COP27 climate talks in Egypt next month.

And as the great transition goes into higher gear, eyes are turning to Africa.

Its soil is rich in manganese, cobalt, nickel and lithium — crucial ingredients in cleaner technology for generating or storing power.

The Moanda region alone contains as much as a quarter of known global reserves of manganese, according to the Compagnie Miniere de l’Ogooue (Comilog), a subsidiary of the French group Eramet which operates the site.

– Curse of oil –

But hopes that the mineral boom will translate into a new dawn of prosperity in the world’s poorest continent are clouded by memories of what happened with oil.

In Africa’s oil-producing countries, black gold meant a gush of wealth for a well-connected few — but only drops for the needy majority.

Corruption sucked the dollars out of plans for roads, hospitals and schools, and environmental damage was often all that remained.

Africa’s potential in new-age minerals is “huge”, said the former chief economist of the African Development Bank, Rabah Arezki, who pointed out that reserves are not even known because so little exploration has been done.

But, he said, “there is very little reason to think that this windfall will benefit the people of Africa, particularly because of governance concerns.”

New metals deposits are following one another at a giddying pace.

In one example, Firefinch Ltd of Australia was looking for gold at Goulamina in southern Mali when it came across lithium, said Seydou Semega, geologist and local director of the firm.

Firefinch then created a local offshoot, Leo Lithium, and inaugurated the mine in early 2022 — a facility that it says could create 1,200 jobs and generate more than $100 million a year for Mali in taxes and dividends.

“Could Africa be the main source of lithium in the world?” asked Simon Hay, director of Leo Lithium. “Absolutely.” 

Comilog, which has operated the Moanda mine since 1960, claims the creation of 3,400 direct and 6,000 indirect jobs, a contribution of around $345 million per year to the national economy in various forms, plus millions of dollars in health and education provisions for the population.

“You need to have a social policy that is as committed as possible to share this wealth,” said its CEO, Leod Paul Batolo.

Comilog is keen to list its green principles, which include rehabilitating and replanting extraction sites, decarbonising the energy mix of its factories and “setting limits” on encroaching on wildlife areas.

But more generally, innumerable studies say the exploitation of resources in Africa has a long and dark history of unequal distribution of wealth, corruption, environmental damage and rights violations.

– ‘Value chain’ –

A big problem is that Africa is typically used as a source of raw materials, and rarely for processing them into goods of higher value, said Gilles Lepesant, a geographer at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS).

“If activity is limited to mining and extracting ore, Africa will reap no benefit from the energy transition in Europe. It’s absolutely necessary to invest in the value chain,” he said.

He pointed to the Democratic Republic Congo, whose soil is estimated to contain half of the world’s reserves of cobalt, as an example of something that is “both an opportunity and a curse.”

Poorly regulated mining leads to environmental damage and encourages child labour, a phenomenon that is hard to resolve when a family’s livelihood depends on it.

In the sector of tropical forestry, many rich countries have demanded traceability of wood and labour in order to reassure concerned consumers. 

But this is far harder to achieve in the metals used in car batteries and other gadgets, said Lepesant.

“In a lot of cases, the mined metal is exported for refining to other countries, for example China, and then combined with other metals, so it’s hard to know if the cobalt you have on your production line actually comes from such and such a mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo,” he said.

Analyst Hugo Brennan of British firm Verisk Maplecroft said African nations had to strike “a tricky balancing act” — providing incentives for investment while enforcing social and environmental standards — to ensure their mining boom does not go the same way as oil.

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Google looks to take generative AI lead with Gemini

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Google is giving its Bard chatbot a major artificial intelligence boost as ChatGPT-maker OpenAI deals with the aftermath of a boardroom coup that saw chief executive Sam Altman fired then rehired within a span of days
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Google on Wednesday infused its Bard chatbot with a new-generation artificial intelligence model called Gemini, which it touts as being able to reason better than ChatGPT and other rivals.

The search engine juggernaut is aiming to take the generative AI lead from ChatGPT-maker OpenAI as that company deals with the aftermath of a boardroom coup that saw chief executive Sam Altman fired and then rehired within a matter of days.

Google has for years discreetly developed AI powers but was caught off guard when OpenAI late last year released ChatGPT and teamed up with Microsoft to make its capabilities available to users worldwide.

“This is incredible momentum, and yet, we’re only beginning to scratch the surface of what’s possible,” Google chief executive Sundar Pichai said in a release.

“This new era of models represents one of the biggest science and engineering efforts we’ve undertaken as a company.”

It is the first AI model to outperform human experts in certain benchmarks involving problem solving, math, physics, history, law, medicine and ethics, Google DeepMind vice president of product Eli Collins said during a briefing.

A demonstration showed Gemini recognizing what it was shown, from a person acting out a “Matrix” movie scene to someone drawing a duck and then holding up a rubber duck.

Gemini commented on what it was shown, making comparisons, drawing conclusions, and offering suggestions.

Performance of an “Ultra” version of Gemini “far exceeds” that of other state-of-the-art models in 30 benchmark tests measuring capabilities such as image understanding or mathematical reasoning, according to Collins.

A “Pro” version of Gemini built into Bard is designed to handle a wide range of tasks. A “Nano” version is tailored for smartphones, coming first to Google’s top-of-the-line Pixel 8 handset.

Google raced out its own Bard chatbot earlier this year, continually updating the chatbot based on people’s feedback, according to Bard vice president Sissie Hsiao.

“All of that rapid innovation is bringing us to what we see as a truly transformative moment,” Hsiao said during the briefing.

“With Gemini, Bard is getting its biggest upgrade yet.”

– AI collaborator –

Bard will use Gemini for more advanced reasoning, planning, and understanding capabilities, a demonstration showed.

It will be available in English in more than 170 countries and territories, with more languages added soon, according to Hsiao.

Gemini-infused Bard will be expanded to be “multi-modal,” meaning it will be able to work with auditory and visual input as well as text prompts, executives said.

“With Gemini we are one step closer to our vision of bringing you the best AI collaborator in the world,” Hsiao said.

Gemini ramps up the quality of Bard’s performance, whether in writing poetry or computer code to shopping queries or research projects, according to Hsiao.

The “Ultra” version of Gemini designed to handle highly complex tasks will be released early next year, Google said.

“I’m in awe of what it’s capable of,” Collins said of Gemini.

“This is the start of a new era for us at Google as we continue to rapidly innovate and advance the model’s capabilities.”

Google in September integrated Gmail, YouTube and other tools into its Bard chatbot as tech giants seek to persuade users that generative AI is useful and not dangerous or just a fad.

Those capabilities closely match offerings from Microsoft that infuse its Office 365 apps with AI powers, though those come at an extra cost to customers and are not available through the chatbot on its search engine Bing.

The staying power of generative AI chatbots, once the initial excitement has faded, is yet to be confirmed.

Moreover, integration of the OpenAI-based chatbot into Microsoft’s search engine earlier this year failed to make an impact on Google’s overwhelming dominance of search.

Governments and tech companies however insist that generative AI is technology’s next big chapter and have ramped up spending on new products, research, and infrastructure.

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EU proposes three-year delay on UK electric car tariffs

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The U-turn by the European Commission delays a 10% tariff on electric car sales between the EU and UK for three years
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Brussels proposed Wednesday a three-year delay on tariffs on the sale of electric vehicles between Britain and the EU that was meant to kick in from January, in a major reversal of its previous position.

The European Commission said it now wants a one-off extension, until December 31, 2026, after the EU automotive industry raised concerns about the massive costs that would arise from a post-Brexit 10-percent tariff.

The commission’s extension proposal must formally be approved by the EU member states. EU leaders are to hold a regular summit in Brussels next week.

The commission had initially strongly opposed such an extension, despite industry’s pleas, requests from the British government and calls for pragmatism by EU lawmakers.

Its extension proposal, which also covers batteries, includes wording designed to make it legally impossible to put off tariffs beyond the December 2026 date.

“Today’s decision means that we skip an intermediate phase of somewhat strict rules of origin that would have applied from 2024 until the end of 2026,” Commission Vice President Maros Sefcovic said.

“This removes the threat of tariffs on export of EU electric vehicles to the UK and vice versa on 1st January 2024.”

The change of stance was needed because of “circumstances not foreseen” when an EU-UK agreement regulating post-Brexit trade and ties was signed in 2020, Sefcovic said.

He cited higher energy prices spurred by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year, high inflation, and big subsidies China and the United States deploy to boost their electric-vehicle industries.

The European Automobile Manufacturers’ Associations (ACEA) and the UK’s Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) welcomed the commission’s move and urged EU countries to endorse it.

The tariffs, ACEA said, would have cost the EU vehicle makers it represents 4.3 billion euros ($4.6 billion) over the next three years and caused them to lose market share to non-European competitors.

The extension would “allow UK and EU manufacturers to compete with the rest of the world and, crucially, give the European battery industry time to catch up,” Mike Hawes, SMMT chief executive, said.

– ‘Cannot be repeated’ –

The European Union is particularly concerned about potentially unfair competition from cheaper Chinese electric vehicles. In October it formally launched an investigation into Beijing’s subsidies for car manufacturers.

Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen accused China in September of keeping the cost of Chinese electric cars “artificially low by huge state subsidies”.

Sefcovic said the commission’s proposal “supports the competitiveness of our industry and protect jobs in the European Union” and “it’s absolutely clear that this one-off extension cannot be repeated nor prolonged”.

Britain formally left the European Union in January 2020 then, during a transition period, sealed the post-Brexit free-trade agreement with the bloc which came into effect in 2021.

Under that deal, tariffs were to start on January 1, 2024, on vehicles that do not have at least 45 percent UK- or EU-made content, and with batteries that are at least 50-60 percent sourced from each of those territories.

Along with the extension proposal, the commission announced additional funding of up to three billion euros to boost the EU’s battery-manufacturing industry.

The EU’s trade commissioner, Valdis Dombrovskis, said the proposal “provides much-needed predictability and stability to EU car- and battery-makers at a time of fierce global competitive pressure”.

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Twitch to shut down in SKorea over ‘seriously’ high fees

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The platform said it had tried to lower its costs by reducing the maximum video quality but it was still losing money
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US-based streaming platform Twitch said Wednesday it would stop its service in South Korea in February because of “seriously high” network costs, dealing a blow to millions of users in one of the heartlands of e-sports.

The Amazon-owned company said in a statement signed by CEO Dan Clancy that costs were 10 times higher than most other countries, making it impossible to continue operating.

South Korea allows internet service providers to charge data-heavy companies like Twitch extra fees, which has already led to a long dispute with Netflix.

Big telecom firms in Europe have pushed for a similar deal, which they call “fair share”, but an EU consultation concluded in October that the idea was not popular.

Twitch said it had tried to lower its costs by reducing the maximum video quality but it was still losing money and would pull out of the country on February 27.

“The cost of running Twitch in South Korea is currently seriously high,” said the statement.

– ‘Stellar player’ –

Twitch, acquired by Amazon in 2014 for close to $1 billion, gained significant traction among gamers in South Korea.

The firm does not publish user numbers but it was widely reported in 2021 to have six million users in South Korea, more than four percent of its global total.

The country is known for its passionate, competitive, and dedicated gaming community, as well as its megastar Faker — a gamer hailed as the Michael Jordan of e-sports.

“We would like to reiterate that this was a very difficult decision, and one that all of us at Twitch are deeply saddened by,” the company’s Wednesday statement said.

“South Korea has always been a stellar player in the global e-sports community and will continue to do so.”

Shares in South Korean video streaming service Afreeca TV, Twitch’s competitor, soared almost 30 percent in afternoon trading in Seoul.

Some of the country’s Twitch users were devastated by the news.

One streamer, yummy_2 said: “It feels like losing my job right now.”

– Biden vs Trump –

Netflix was the first major international firm to cry foul over South Korea’s rules on network fees, getting entangled in lawsuits with SK Broadband, one of South Korea’s biggest internet service providers.

However, the two firms announced in September they would drop the legal cases and would now instead “collaborate as partners for the future”.

While the usage fees are a boon to telecom companies, they are bitterly opposed by tech platforms around the world.

European lawmakers and digital rights activists also argue such an arrangement could break rules on net neutrality, whereby telecoms firms are barred from selling faster internet speeds to particular companies.

The issue has been at the heart of a years-long dispute in the United States with former President Donald Trump rolling back net neutrality rules and his successor Joe Biden struggling to restore them.

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