Knowing your subsoil to better exploit it. This is Chekinah Olivier’s African challenge. His company OL Consult SARL is currently working on mapping Africa’s mineral resources.
Africa is a veritable playground for multinationals that exploit its subsoil. The continent is full of raw materials: it contains 40% of the world’s gold reserves and 30% of its mineral reserves. With several problems. The first is that the wealth of African subsoil benefits little from the continent’s development. A real “curse of raw materials in Africa”, as economists describe it, due in particular to the lack of knowledge of the resources. It is from this double observation that Chekinah Olivier started, for whom “Africa must give itself the means for its economic growth”.
Chekinah Olivier campaigns for a win-win policy
The businessman, founder of the company OL Consult SARL, supports multinationals in the mining sector in their development in Africa, and more particularly in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Chekinah Olivier called on the Spanish company Xcalibur Multiphysics, whose expertise in terms of cartography is recognized, to create a map of the continent’s mineral resources. “For international companies, it is difficult to secure investments in the mining sector in Africa, due to the lack of information on mineral resources in most countries,” explains Chekinah Olivier, who is counting on his project to both reassure investors and better inform governments of the resources available to him.
An economic project that must be accompanied by a reform of African governance. Of course, it is up to the States to launch policies in favor of their populations. Enough to join the convictions of the Canadian businessman of Congolese origin, whose well-being of African populations has always been a fight. “From now on, assures Chekinah Olivier, the relationship between foreign companies and African States must be a ‘win-win’ relationship.” A win-win policy that is based on a certainty: “Each party must benefit equally from the agreement. Multinational companies can provide their technologies and the financing of their projects while African States provide the land to unlock natural resources.”
Unlocking Africa’s potential
However, Chekinah Olivier believes that, “to prevent foreign companies from taking advantage of African wealth without redistributing it” and for “an adequate contract to be negotiated upstream and implemented so that each party can benefit from the redistribution of wealth”, the States themselves must know the resources at their disposal. Chekinah Olivier has spent most of his experience in the mining sector. The businessman, an inveterate jack-of-all-trades, intends to provide the keys to “liberate and open up the potential of Africa and developing countries by carrying out the most exhaustive inventory possible of what is available and exploitable”.
In the coming months, the mapping should therefore become the ultimate reference, as much for investors as for governments. This document will make it possible to determine as precisely as possible “the discovery of economic deposits and of course the evaluation of the mineral potential of the subsoil in the areas studied”, explains Chekinah Olivier, who wants to “encourage private investment to support mining production”. The mapping will list, continues the boss of OL Consult SARL, all raw materials, but more particularly “critical or strategic minerals such as Lithium, Nickel, Cobalt, Vanadium, Rare Earths, Coltan, etc., because these minerals are essential to modern industry and the energy transition, offering a plausible alternative to global warming which threatens all of humanity”.
