Clarence Chongo, Lusaka, 14 March 2024 – His face suffused with pride, President Hakainde Hichilema announced, to a packed Cape Town auditorium, a discovery in Zambia of truly historical proportions. Mr. Hichilema was speaking, via video link, to delegates of the 2024 edition of the Investing in African Mining Indaba at the Cape Town International Convention Centre (CTICC). This event was also special in that the opening day also marked the thirtieth anniversary of the Indaba. There was a pulpable air of expectation, detectable on the faces and in the body language of the attendees packed in the main hall for the opening ceremony. Many held onto their seats with bated breath, in eager and unabashed anticipation.
For most of the morning of 5th February 2024, a rumour had spread through CTICC like a flame licking tinder. Something big was coming out of Zambia; something that would change the conversation around mining forever, if not the very nature of how the mining sector did business; something linked to big data and to Artificial Intelligence (AI). As Mr. Hichilema’s live image flickered onto the giant screen, applause echoed through the chamber. The president’s delivery was even, measured, and short, punctuated by more applause and cheers to almost every one of his lines. Then came the moment of ultimate confirmation of the news that had circulated on the rumour mill throughout the morning.
“Kobold metals,” Mr. Hichilema announced, “Which uses pioneering Artificial Intelligence – AI – technology, has made significant progress in defining the orebody at its Ming’omba Project, following a $150m investment in 2022.”
As announcements go, this one fell firmly into the realm of spectacular understatement. KoBold Metals had done far more than make ‘significant progress.’ Perhaps the president was being careful not to wade too deeply into what was, in effect, private-sector business, lest he be accused of meddling. If Mr. Hichilema was acting with a generous dose of caution, he had not shared the same sentiment with the man he had placed in charge of managing the national purse strings. In his own address to the Indaba audience, Zambia’s Minister of Finance and National Planning, Dr. Situmbeko Musokotwane, shot straight from the hip in an unequivocal statement.
“Just this morning,” said Dr. Musokotwane, “We heard this news, that KoBold, working together with Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines, ZCCM-IH, in partnership, have discovered what is likely to be one of the biggest copper resources in Zambia, probably to be in the range of first and third-largest producer in the world.” Of course, the Mining Indaba audience believed him, but still, Dr. Musokotwane wanted to make sure. “You can see this for yourself in the Financial Times,” continued he, “But I also see that Mr. Goldman is here. I hope you will listen to him when his time comes.”
That reference to a ‘Mr. Goldman’ was, in fact, to Josh Goldman, co-founder and President of KoBold Metals. His time did come, and Goldman would go on to address the Indaba and grace a number of discussion panels where audiences received the news straight from the horse’s mouth. Mr. Goldman and KoBold Metals, for their part, could be forgiven for the genuine glee that accompanied their announcement. They had timed it perfectly, after all. Of course, the discovery wasn’t actually made on the day of the opening ceremony and thirtieth anniversary of Mining Indaba. It’s almost certain that the news had been held close to the KoBold chest in order to have the maximum impact by being shared with the world at this Indaba. After all, all the movers and shakers of the mining industry would be right here; “in the room,” as it were, so what better place? The KoBold news went on to dominate almost every conversation for the remainder of Mining Indaba 2024, which spanned four days, making Zambia’s delegates the veriest hot property of the summit.
Perfect Mistiming
Back in Lusaka, however, the picture couldn’t be bleaker. The announcement fell onto the ears of a deeply sceptical audience, a population in the grips of a debilitating cost-of-living crisis. Inflation had bottomed out at 9% many months earlier and was steeply on the rise. Every month-end brought increasingly disturbing news as the Energy Regulation Board ever so incessantly hiked up fuel prices at every announcement. The Zambian Kwacha seemed to careen, one month to another, from a downward spiral to an incomprehensible yo-yoing existence. Against this background, an apparently grandiose announcement by a company connected to a number of billionaires around the world—not least among whom were Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos—and an announcement of fantastical economic opportunities that the general population had no direct sight of and that could not heal their immediate ills, was probably mistimed.
If the KoBold announcement was mistimed, it was certainly misconstrued, at least in the wording. ‘KoBold Discovers the Biggest Copper Deposit in Zambia’ ran a typical headline. Within minutes of the announcement hitting news desks, the Zambian Internet gave its feverish response through often emotional and sometimes almost hysterical comments.
Mwebantu, the largest online Zambian news media page, which operates on Facebook and boasts 2.6 million followers (more than 10% of the entire population), went with this:
“UPDATE: BILL GATES-BACKED MINING COMPANY DISCOVERS VAST ZAMBIAN COPPER DEPOSIT. KOBOLD METALS’ DISCOVERY COMES AS U.S. STEPS UP AFRICAN METALS PUSH TO RIVAL CHINA’S DOMINANCE” (uppercase emphasis ours).
It is not known whether the post on the Mwebantu page was sanctioned by KoBold. What’s known, however, is the volume of negative sentiment that it invoked. The post received 5,000 reactions, 3,000 comments and more than 100 shares. 20% of the reactions were laughing emojis and only 1.5% were loves. Comments ranged from the scornful to the downright disdainful. A follower called Slebie Chiyasa went so far as to declare: “We are happy for the U.S. May that county[sic] prosper,” to rapturous reaction.
The Zambian people’s reaction to what was immensely positive news for the nation ranged from disbelief, suspicion of deception, ambivalence or anger towards the notion that this discovery would bring no benefit whatsoever to the average, common Zambian, and scorn or anger at the perception that the news would only benefit already-rich foreigners. The most prevalent view could be encapsulated in the sentiment expressed by a Kelvin Mwenya Shiyombwe who opined: “They haven’t discovered it, it has been there for time memorial [sic]. How do you discover something that has been in existence, like they discovered Victoria falls which was there before they came in Africa.”
To Discover or Not to Discover
And therein lies the KoBold problem. Use of the word ‘discover’ elicited anti-colonialist reactions, hacking back to an 1855 visit by Dr. David Livingstone to Northern Rhodesia—now Zambia, of course—and to Musi-oa-Tunya, later renamed ‘Victoria Falls.’ David Livingstone’s visit has gone down in the history books as a ‘discovery,’ in connection with the falls. Debate has raged in Southern Africa for well over a century as to how someone can be said to have discovered something that other human beings already knew about and lived with and around.
It so turns out that knowledge about the existence of a copper orebody at Ming’omba has been an open secret for decades. Many people commenting about the news alluded to the fact that they already knew about copper ore at Ming’omba, so how could KoBold claim this to be a discovery? Many others concluded that this company had simply been sent by the Zambian government to hide behind and away from a badly performing economy.
At Financial Insight, we believe that the KoBold announcement was, indeed, a discovery of historical significance. In Part 2 of this article, we shall qualify use of the term ‘discovery’ and explain precisely what was discovered, why it was historical and why this was a missed opportunity for Zambia to come together and rally around a truly momentous point in the life of the nation. To close this part off, let’s also get the news right from the horse’s mouth:
“The Ming’omba project in Chililabombwe will be one of the largest and highest-grade copper mines in the world when put into production,” said Josh Goldman, speaking at the KoBold stand inside the Mining Indaba Exhibition Hall at CTICC. “It’s a remarkable ore deposit, similar to Kakula [in the Democratic Republic of Congo] in size and grade and will make an extraordinary copper mine. We are very proud to be developing this project in partnership with the Zambian Government and ZCCM-IH, our joint-venture partner.”
