Around the year 2007, a senior Zimbabwean executive was in the USA on possibly a private mission to bust sanctions by getting a major US-based International Bank to invest in our country during our era of record-making hyperinflation.
Painona with with Tapiwa Nyandoro
The patriotic executive was out to sell his country and corporate as worthy of American investment.
He waxed lyrically about the Zimbabwean work ethic, the misunderstood President Robert Mugabe, the need for the land reform and its implementation errors that could be corrected, the level of education of the locals and, above all, opportunities that called for investment. “Those who enter the property market,” his forte at the time, “would reap huge rewards when the “troubles are over”, he prophesied.
To his surprise, his hosts quickly agreed with him. “True”, they said “Let our young man run you through our own analysis”.
And out came Zimbabwe satellite maps. The fresh one from one of the Ivy league Universities pointed at the Gold seam that runs all the way via Bulawayo into Botswana, the abundant iron ore reserves, some so rich that you just have to cart them away, the naturally air-conditioned climate with no parallel the World over, an ideal getaway for America’s ageing baby boomers as they enter retirement — especially along the Zambezi escarpment, and Coal: huge deposits, not only in the Hwange area, but in Zimbabwe’s North East and Low Veldt as well.
His hosts warned him to buy land in the Binga area along the stretch of the Zambezi Valley, for after the “troubles”, should they enter the market, his organisation (massive by our standards)might find itself out gunned. The African was shaken by the detail, and the audacity of the proposals.
He mumbled something about the fragile ecosystems of the Zambezi valley as a hindrance to the property development ambitions of the American Bankers. He had thought he was there as a resource person, not a student.
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The Americans will be here at the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) general assembly, their eyes open. Their politicians are one step forward, crafting an enabling environment for their interests, which of course, need not be mutually exclusive from ours.
But Coal is my subject today, or more precisely, our poor organisational skills at national level; our poor visioning; our lack of ambition; our missed opportunities and our propensity to blame others for our poor economic development.
China burns almost half the World’s supply of coal and became a net importer of the mineral in 2009. Domestic supplies in India cannot keep up with the growing Indian economy. In Japan, demand for coal is growing following the earthquake-induced nuclear accident at the Fukushima reactor.
Germany’s nuclear power plants are nearing the end of their economic lives and might be replaced by thermal ones.
Some Japanese were in Zimbabwe a few months ago exploring the possibility of mining Coal. If my memory serves me right, their requirements were some fifteen million tonnes per annum, more than three times our current micro-scale national production. Have we bothered to follow up? It is an opportunity we should grab; a subject that should seize Cabinet. The potential is enormous.
Eagle-eyed, big-thinking Americans have sported the opportunity in Asia where demand for Coal imports is growing. In the American market the Coal industry is struggling due to tough environmental rules and the plummeting cost of a cleaner alternative fuel: natural gas. More than 40% of American Coal is mined in the Powder River basin in Western US, with some of it exported to Asia via Canadian ports.
But coal exporters in the land of the Brave want to build four new terminals on the western shores of the USA to increase US exports to Asia. These infrastructural developments are to increase exports by 130 million tonnes more from the region. The largest terminal is designed to handle up to 48 million tonnes per year and six million tonnes of grain exports. Zimbabwe’s annual grain production is less than two million tonnes, despite the potential for producing in excess of 60 million tonnes.
Where is Zimbabwe’s blueprint for a similar coal-exporting focused proposal that would create over a hundred thousand quality jobs and over US$7 billion in export receipts per annum? The American proposal is in jeopardy as affluent Societies in Western USA object to the 18 trains per day that would rumble in their backyard on their way to and from the 48 Mt per year terminal alone. They see the project as a shameful low tech third world business. They prefer the high tech aeronautical industry to resource extraction.
But for us it is a different story. The rumbling trains would be a sign of life; the creation of jobs. Wouldn’t it be music to our ears? Think of the jobs that railways, whose installed capacity would need to be raised from 18 million tonnes per year to over 150 million tonnes, and whose capacity utilisation would have to rise from under 4 million tonnes to well over 130 million tonnes per annum?
Then there is the positive effective in neighbouring countries as new ports / terminals have to be built to cater for such a proposal. SSA Marine, the company that will operate the 48 million tonne per year terminal, says just under 5 000 jobs will be created during the terminal’s construction and 1 250 when it becomes fully operational. The average salary for SSA Marine employee is estimated at US100 000 per year, collectively about equal to half the civil service wage bill in Zimbabwe per month. Think of the taxes?
Think of the indirect jobs this creates? The American terminal might not survive the American Federal Government’s equivalent of our environmental impact assessment. But the market is there. It is ours to take. Send your feedback to [email protected] or [email protected]
