Randgold May Reduce DRC Investment, Looks to Kenyan Potential

Earlier this year, Africa’s mining secretary announced that Rangold Resources Ltd. will be conducting a study of Kenya’s potential for gold-mining activity, in order to estimate the region’s mining potential beginning the end of May 2014.

Randgold CEO Mark Bristow said at the Kibali mine: “There's some gold potential in Kenya, particularly down the south just across the border from where North Mara is in Tanzania.”

At the end of the month, federal agencies will evaluate the findings to determine whether or not it is a viable option to pursue the mining of gold in Kenya.

“We’ve allowed them to come to Kenya to look at the opportunities,” Najib Balala of the Mining Secretary’s Office said in an interview yesterday at the Kibali mine operated by the Jersey-based company in the Democratic Republic of Congo. “We’ve not given them a license yet.”

Ranked seventh in its production of fluorspar, Kenya stands as the world’s third-largest producer of soda ash; with fluorspar used to make steel and soda ash used to make glass, the mining industry is anxious to get its hands on the fruitful potential of Kenya’s mines. The African Development Bank recently released a comment that although Kenya has rich deposits of gold, rubies and sapphires, precious stone mining only accounts for less than one percent of its gross national product.

“We’re coming to work with the minister of mines and look at the geology,” Randgold Chairman Mark Bristow said in an interview at the Kibali gold mine. “There’s some gold potential in Kenya, particularly down the south just across the border from where North Mara is in Tanzania.”

Bristow also added that Kenya has three of the world’s top 12 potential mining locations, specially high in its potential for world-class gold deposits. One region particularly in Africa is the Lake Victoria gold fields, which is referred to as “a very under-explored opportunity”, covering the South Sudan, north eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, parts of Kenya and Tanzania.

Other parties have weighed in on Africa’s potential in the mining industry, with Goldplat Plc commenting in March 2013 that its plant in Kenya hopes to grow from producing 25 tons to 125 tons by the end of this 2014 alone. Stakeholders have begun to pay-up in order to save their place within this booming African market, with Red Rock Resources Plc (a London-based gold exploration company) as the first example of a company increasing its stake in its Kenyan holdings. Its Kenyan-based company Mid Migori Mining shifted from 75 percent to 15 percent by financing a feasibility study for a gold mine, after Red Rock acquired the company in 2009.