Chinese giants have set their sights on the precious iron deposits in the Simandou mountains, in West Africa. The government has temporarily halted the project, but not for environmental reasons.
Article updated on 7 July 2022
In West Africa, more precisely in Guinea, there is a mountain range made up almost entirely of iron. Its concentration reaches up to 65 per cent, the maximum possible in nature. These are the Simandou mountains and, according to estimates, they hold 8.6 billion tonnes: enough to forge the steel for 100,000 buildings identical to New York's Empire State Building. For millennia the iron lay underground, but from the 1990s onwards foreign mining companies began to come forward. First the Anglo-Australian Rio Tinto, then Israeli billionaire Beny Steinmetz, then Brazil's Vale. All of them, however, ran into seemingly insurmountable obstacles — military coups, legal disputes, corruption allegations and the Ebola epidemic — not to mention the enormous investment required to set such a powerful productive machine in motion in a place so difficult to reach. Now, though, it is the turn of the Chinese giants, who appear determined to press ahead at any cost. Little matter if it means sacrificing one of the continent's most biodiverse ecosystems.
Our guide to the Simandou mountains is a lengthy reportage written by Sheridan Prasso for Bloomberg. A quarter of a century after the first fruitless approaches by other foreign companies, in 2019 a Chinese consortium secured the concessions to mine roughly half of the Simandou iron deposit. Last year workers began laying roads and digging tunnels. The plan calls for building from scratch a railway line some 650 kilometres long running all the way to a new port on the Atlantic coast, from which cargoes will set sail for the other side of the planet.
This project too falls within the broader framework of the New Silk Road (Belt and Road Initiative), through which China is building new trade routes by rail and sea, becoming — among other things — the leading importer of raw materials from Africa. Today Beijing already sits at the top of global steel production, yet it remains dependent on Australia and Brazil for imports of its key ingredient, iron ore. The 8.6 billion tonnes held by the Simandou mountains would be enough to build all of China's airports, skyscrapers, merchant vessels and weapons for seven years, Bloomberg points out.
These expansionist ambitions, however, appear to overlook one crucial aspect: mining activities can prove devastating to the ecosystem. This is what happened in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where copper and cobalt mines (70 per cent Chinese-owned) left behind environmental degradation described as "alarming" by the United Nations.
"When these Chinese companies come to a country like Guinea, where the government and rule of law are very weak, they take advantage of the fragility of institutions to free themselves from legal constraints," Jingjing Zhang explains to Bloomberg — a lawyer nicknamed the Chinese Erin Brockovich, and founder of the non-profit organisation Center for Transnational Environmental Accountability, which investigates precisely the environmental impact of Chinese investments abroad.
In September 2021, Guinea was the scene of a coup d'état, the third in forty years. On seizing power, the military halted several mining projects, including Rio Tinto's in the Simandou mountains themselves, questioning whether they were in the nation's interest.
And the Simandou mountains are one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on the African continent. They are home to the largest remaining population of western chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus), classified as "Critically Endangered" on the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The plans for open-cast mines, due to begin in 2025, involve felling trees across an area of 736 square kilometres — to say nothing of the constant truck traffic, running diesel generators, and acid and heavy metal spills. Some 450 villages will be affected.
When approached by Bloomberg, representatives of the local NGO Action Mines Guinée said they were not opposed in principle to mining activities, given their importance to the economy. They are asking, however, that those activities be carried out "responsibly". The approach taken so far, though, gives little cause for optimism. Some even suspect that the Chinese companies bypassed the environmental impact assessments that are in theory indispensable in order to obtain the green light.
Near the border with Sierra Leone, workers began detonating dynamite to dig a tunnel in March 2021, without even warning local residents. Some people found the walls of their homes damaged, without receiving any compensation. Others had their home — or the farm that was their sole source of income — expropriated, receiving in return just under 1,200 euros. Derisory sums. Moreover, until now the residents' bargaining power has been virtually non-existent. NGOs are now pinning their hopes on the military who took power in September. If the new government does not adopt a more forceful approach towards the mining companies, Action Mines Guinée argues, there is a risk of an "ecological catastrophe".
And in the end, on 3 July, Guinea's military government issued a stop order on all mining operations in the Simandou mountains. The reasons, however, are not environmental. As early as March, the government had in fact turned to both the Chinese consortium and Simfer, Rio Tinto's local subsidiary, asking them to collaborate on building the infrastructure essential to operating the mine, including the 670-kilometre railway line and the port. The two companies signed an initial agreement that never, however, consolidated into a fully fledged joint venture. According to Al Jazeera, which reports the news, the two firms could not agree on the conditions imposed — first and foremost the requirement to reserve a 15 per cent stake for the state in both the mineral resources and the infrastructure. They thus missed the deadline set by the government — which had already been extended — and the government responded by suspending their activities.
