Last week was a busy week one in mining across the African continent, Mining Indaba reports. In Tanzania, the government is going all out to increase the mining sector’s contribution to the economy, but not all moves appear to be well-informed. Recent calls by the country’s president for more gold smelters to be built has been ascribed to a lack of understanding of how the industry works, by Ami Mpungwe, Chairman of Tanzania’s Chamber of Energy and Minerals. Apparently, more than 99% of gold mined in Tanzania is already processed there. Attention has also been drawn to new regulations in the country, which make it mandatory for companies holding special mining licences to offload at least 30% of their shares at the Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange and now government is reportedly looking to include tanzanite gemstones as part of its national foreign reserves at Tanzania’s central bank.

On the upside, the Zambian government and the mining industry have agreed to resolve the case of electricity tariffs out of court. Then there is also Nigeria, which plans to review the royalty rates to reflect current commodity prices and also review mineral licensing fees to discourage mineral title speculation. In addition, the Nigerian ministry of Mines and Solid Minerals Development has revoked non-performing mineral titles to make the area financially and technically viable for investors and the country’s proposed N30 billion intervention fund for Solid Minerals development has been approved.