Mineral beneficiation key to job creation
Baboki Kayawe | Friday December 16, 2016 16:12
This week Madigele delivered a well thought out and impassionate response to the State of the Nation Address challenging government to look deeper into terms of copper, soda ash and coal as the mineral industry value chain remains unexploited. Consequently, he said, endless employment opportunities as well as growth prospects, are buried in there.
He said extremely small copper components (nanoparticles or nanomaterial) are very invaluable in pesticides manufacturing. Madigele further said this could see double functions as both an employment creation and improving the agricultural sector.
“This is one area that we can actually partake in, in terms of job creation because with firms of pesticides manufacturing, we can actually go far as a nation that really wants to improve agricultural production; the hectares of our crops,” he said.
The medical doctor-cum-politician advocated for the establishment of pharmaceutical firms that would utilise copper sulphate to produce certain lotions like fungicides. He explained that these creams are used for the skin for certain dermatophytosis, and for fertilisers as well. The nation, he said, needed to agree that it is at crossroads, hence the need to go a little higher in thinking and aspirations. He reminded the august House that successful countries like Singapore and Malaysia took this route.
Pertaining to soda ash and salt from Sowa, chlorine could be manufactured and be utilised for domestic and import water purification purposes. He noted that the Water Utilities Corporation imports tonnes of chlorine to clean water. “So, I think going forward, not only should the Botash people focus on just production for export, they should also think about the value chain of producing chlorine or producing caustic, which is used in chemicals that clean, and also other products that can come out there like detergents and also chemicals that can actually be used in Lobatse when the leather park gets to be functional.”
On huge coal deposits, fossil fuels and biomass in abundance in Mmamabula and Palapye areas, he advised that government must not focus on building railway lines to export this coal, because coal can actually be liquefied. “We can liquefy this coal that we have in abundance to get various products,” he said, before adding that, we can get petrol and diesel from this coal liquefaction. In fact, we can have a lot of things coming out of here”.
In addition, one of the most important things is ethanol, which is invaluable in green technology, it could be produced from agricultural products. This is an overdue dialogue as the country has long aspired to be a knowledge-based society, he said. As a result, Madigela stated that time is now to put policy into implementation because numerous policies, for instance the Human Resource Development Strategy of 2009, Vision 2016. Almost every policy document mentions transition from a mineral-based economy to a knowledge-based one.
He further argued that local chemical engineers, metallurgists and agricultural professors, among others could take advantage of this to widen participation in job creation as well as lowering unemployment rates.
“It is very pertinent because we have actually produced relevant people at our various centres of learning like Botswana International University of Science and Technology and University of Botswana who can actually be deployed here.”