When Mining Companies Leave, African Communities Pay
JOHANNESBURG – This week, policymakers and industry executives gathered in Cape Town for the annual African Mining Indaba. They will follow a familiar script: governments will court investors, companies will promise jobs and growth, and champagne will flow as speakers tout Africa as indispensable to the global energy transition.
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As always, the emphasis will be on new projects, fresh capital, and untapped opportunities, with no mention of how these ventures tend to end. But in mining, endings matter more than beginnings, because they reveal where power truly lies.
As the clean-energy transition gathers pace, the question of how mining projects end has taken on new urgency. The global race for critical minerals is often framed as a technical challenge: How quickly can fossil fuels be........
