Altus Strategies mining company has recently announced gold discovery in Egypt.
Parts of #Egypt fall within the Arabian-Nubian Shield containing some of the world’s largest gold deposits. Previous profit-sharing agreements impeded exploration activity, leaving gold production lagging behind that in #Sudan. By @whitehouse789.https://t.co/TYXcxP8rMS
— The Africa Report (@TheAfricaReport) June 9, 2022
Locations and on-site images of our projects in the highly prospective Eastern Desert in #Egypt, where more than 100 hard rock artisanal #gold workings have been mapped with grades up to 100 g/t gold. #ALS #ALTS #ALTUF pic.twitter.com/wwKaAI4DrK
— Altus Strategies Plc (@Altusstrategies) May 31, 2022
Right now, there are more questions than there are answers. How will this affect the local economy? How many locals will be employed by Altus? Will they be paid fairly?
The main answer that we do have, at this point in time, is that they have employed ten Egyptian geologists. I suppose that’s a good start, but I think a key concern is one that we will most likely not know the answer to: the nature of the relationship between Altus and the Egyptian government. After all, we can’t expect a foreign company to care deeply about locals; as a publicly traded company, they’re there to simply make money and please their shareholders.
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And it seems as though they’re off to a good start with that. Altus itself appears confident that this deal is a lucrative one for them. A day before announcing the deal and gold discoveries on their website, the CEO of Altus bought around 417,000 USD worth of his company’s stock.
The mining company currently has a two-year contract. Where will the funds for that contract be going?
We already know that Egypt’s Sukari gold mine contributes around 900 million dollars to the county’s GDP. This amount is likely to rise now, in large partly due to a relaxing of laws that essentially limited the amount a foreign company could make:
“The lack of activity was due, in part, to the country’s past system of royalties and profit-sharing agreements, which made it difficult and unprofitable for miners to explore for and exploit minerals.
A legislative overhaul in 2020 eliminated the need for miners to form joint ventures with the Egyptian government. It also limited state royalties to a maximum of 20%.”
The Sukari gold mind itself will change from being run by the contractor Centamin (an Australian company) to being run by the owner of the mine, which will also be Centamin. This is projected to save them around 19 million dollars a year. Egyptians had voiced concerns eleven years ago regarding foreign operation of the mine.
It’s hard to find much information on Altus beyond what they provide. Frankly, the mere fact that they are a mining company working primarily in Africa is sufficient to raise suspicion. That coupled with Egypt’s track record of corruption, which has likely cost the country billions, is more than reason enough to be very concerned.
So perhaps more serious than the concerns about Altus specifically, are just the usual concerns about Egypt itself, namely who’s running it.
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Now I understood why the US troops that were retrieved during trump period has now been deployed again in Somalia..