Despite the slowdown in the Chinese economy and the resulting slump in commodity prices, a consortium of Chinese, Singaporean, and Guinean companies are due to ramp up bauxite ore mining in the West African country of Guinea from 10 to 15 million tons this year, before reaching 30 million tons in 2017.
Guinea boasts the largest undeveloped high-grade iron ore deposits in the world and some $222 billion worth of bauxite. Bauxite is a primary source for production of aluminum—a metal so ubiquitous in modern manufacturing that it is found in everything from bottle caps to aircraft carriers.
As a result of profits from mining, Guinea’s infrastructure has seen a great boost. But every silver lining has its cloud, and in the case of bauxite mining that cloud is a radioactive miasma of arsenic, mercury, and uranium.
Dams and Democracy
The construction of the Kaleta hydroelectric dam has brought a stable electricity supply to the capital city Conakry for the first time, and plans are in place for a second $2 billion dam which would double the country’s electricity output.
The successful completion of the dam also played a significant role in President Alpha Conde’s reelection to office last year, marking the country’s second relatively free and fair elections after decades of military dictatorship.
Other blandishments have included $200 million spent on health clinics, housing, and solar street lighting. Much of this was achieved during the Ebola outbreak of 2014, which killed 2,540 Guineans and saw most international firms mothballing projects and withdrawing workers.
Red, Toxic Dust
China became Africa’s biggest trading partner in 2009, and it has shared enough of the profits to make these improvements possible. But the human rights and environmental concerns characteristic of such partnerships with China have also come to Guinea.
China is now heavily investing in Guinean mines because its previous main source of bauxite, Malaysia, banned mining activities for environmental reasons. Malaysia imposed a three-month moratorium on bauxite mining following outcry from locals about runoff from unregulated mines polluting drinking water and red, toxic dust falling on villages and farms due to lax transportation regulations.
The dust is dredged up during the bauxite excavation process and, unless the trucks transporting it from the mine are adequately covered, it leaves a thick red coating on everything it passes on route to the refinery.
In Pahang Province, the effect of the red dust on people’s health and farmland has been called an environmental catastrophe. In Kuantan, where most of the water consumed by residents is drawn downstream of the mines, the rivers have on occasion turned red, as has the nearby coastline after heavy spells of rain have carried the noxious sediment into the sea.
Last December, the Pahang Fisheries Department issued a warning against the consumption of seafood until further tests could be carried out to determine if the heavy metal pollution had made it into the food chain.
With the world’s largest reserves of bauxite ore and Malaysian production on hiatus, Guinea’s industry stands poised to become the world’s leading exporter of bauxite.
The question is whether Guinea is ready for the added environmental pressures that moving from 5 million tons of production last year to 30 million in 2017 will bring. The signs aren’t encouraging.
In contrast to Malaysia, which is a developed country with a modern regulatory system, Guinea is one of the world’s least developed countries scrambling to emerge from decades of economic torpor and still in its democratic infancy.
What’s more, mining areas heavily overlap with farming grounds, a fact that could endanger the country’s capacity to feed its growing population.
Short-term gains in mining could lead farmers to abandon their crops or sell their lands to mining companies. In the words of Guinea’s agriculture minister, Jacqueline Sultan: “It is a challenge for the two sectors to coexist,” she told the Guardian. “Given the choice between a sector that employs 100,000 people or the capacity to feed 12 million people, I prefer the latter.”
Although progress has been made in terms of social indicators since the transition from military to civilian rule in 2010, little has been done to clean up the mining industry.
Despite the abundance of resources, Guinea remains one of the poorest African states, suffering from 50 years of military rule that left its infrastructure in tatters. And apart from the building of mega-projects, Chinese companies are not famous for encouraging workers’ rights or safety.
In 2011, the government did put forward a new mining code with provisions to combat corruption and protect the environment, but regulations are yet to be implemented. Since it became Africa’s biggest trading partner China has received a lot of criticism for exploiting the lax human rights and environmental protection in the continent to run smash-and-grab operations to exploit its resources.
Observers have become increasingly worried things may be no different in Guinea. As evidence of this they point to the use of Chinese workers to build the port and ancillary infrastructure for the transport of the bauxite whilst locals suffer high rates of unemployment.
Chinese officials claim they have learned from their experience in Zambia, where delays over minimum-wage rises and failure to remedy unsafe work practices resulted in deadly riots in 2012.
Whatever concessions are offered to Guinean workers, if they do not go hand in hand with huge improvements to environmental protection, they are likely to be overshadowed by a cloud of toxic red dust.
Uju Okoye is a Toronto-based researcher with a focus on African politics.
