Emerging Economies
Apr
That’s Africa baby
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We were waiting in a Newmont conference room on site at the Ahafo mine. On the agenda: a briefing from Newmont’s General Manager in Ahafo Jay Bastian. He’s going to try and tell us what it’s like to run a place like this. The pressure for profitable production amid the wildly unpredictability that is Africa.
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Apr
It’s a strange concept to get your head around. What could a mining company—a gold mining company—possibly teach anyone about sustainability?
If you want some gold today, you don’t settle in a quaint mountain town in the Rockies filled with scrappy boot strappers singing Colorado My Home Sweet Home in hopes of discovering a nice little vein you can claim.
Too many people have done that already.
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Apr
We’re not the world
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If you’re like me, there’s probably nothing you’d like to forget more about the ‘80’s than the music. OK, so I’m often accused of being a music snob. But still. Never Gonna Give You Up. Maneater. We’re Not Gonna Take It.
There was also Live Aid. A purging of self-indulgent guilt from an especially gilded time. We did good, didn’t we? We bought concert tickets around the world. Watched the making of the video. Subscribed to MTV.
Despite the altruism, there are some that would like to forget Live Aid as well. To some, it put irrevocable contexts around African nations that have mitigated their growth and defined narrow (patronizing?) solutions that these countries are struggling to overcome still.
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Apr
Riding the bus from the “before” site in Akeym toward the working mine in Ahafo. After meeting, hugging, and looking in the eyes of the people in the surrounding villages, there’s a lot of reflection. There are human beings here. Students are sharing experiences and stories about them.
We have new relationships, and that changes things. Discussions have shifted from theories about relocation operations to relocating people. People we now know.
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Apr
He’s a big guy. Smart. Ghanaian friendliness exemplified. A presence barefaced in its proclamation: “Challenge me? Sure. But you better bring it.” Kwasi Boateng, Social Investment Manager at the project in Akyem.
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Apr
When you go to fancy-pants MBA school, you learn a lot of fancy-pants terms. It’s nice at first to throw them around and sound smart. Kind of justifies the expense of the degree.
But pretty soon you realize they aren’t that meaningful if (a) they really aren’t communicating anything other than you’re a snotty MBA with some fancy-pants terms, and (b) you really don’t know what it means in the first place.
And by means, I’m talking about the experience of driving through the barely-settled hills of Ghana and happening upon a working gold mine.
Towering processing machinery clustered together, the size of ten, maybe twelve city blocks. Caterpillar’s repair facility four stories high, two football fields long. Security check-points like NORAD. Vehicles zipping about in some presumably rational way, creating traffic like the town square of a small Midwestern town. Compounds of mess halls, pool parlors, the bar, and decent motel-like barracks.
And we haven’t even seen the mine. Or its haul trucks. Or drillers. Or excavators.
Maybe this is what my finance professor meant by Capital Intensive.
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Apr
Many Newmont employees are required to wear jumpsuits. Makes them easier to spot by the mining vehicles, and a little easier for security.
Apparently they’re a hot item. Counterfeit Newmont jumpsuits started popping up in the small towns around the Ahafo mine site.
Newmont folks tell me they have yet to see them used in any kind of fraudulent ways. Ghanaians are telling Newmont that they’re simply a status symbol. They signify you’re employed. It’s impressive around town.
“You see them on the streets at night in some of the villages,” one Newmont employee told me. “They’re all the rage.”
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Apr
Power trip
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Around Ahafo, 12-foot flag posts (like the kind you used to have on your bike only… well, taller) are attached to full sized, two-ton Chevy pick-ups so the haul trucks don’t run them over. Haul trucks, it should go without saying, always have the right away. You wait at intersections in the mine site for the “all-clear” over the two-way radio before proceeding. Haul trucks won’t stop.
The director of training at Ahafo tells me women Ghanaians make better haul truck drivers.
“They aren’t as arrogant. Not as attracted to the power. More responsible.”
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