By Ed Stoddard
JOHANNESBURG Feb 2 (Reuters) – Fancy a bet on the
best-performing currency of 2012?
If last year is anything to go by it may lie somewhere in
frontier Africa, scene of a headlong resource scramble by mining
companies that threatens to overwhelm small, undeveloped
economies with a tsunami of cash.
The Tanzanian shilling could be an outside shot – the
east African country is an up-and-coming gold producer and
promising source of natural gas.
But a stronger contender could well be the leone of
Sierre Leone, home to some of the world’s richest but
least-exploited iron ore deposits due to a 1991-2002 civil war
that claimed 50,000 lives and brought the industry to a
standstill.
That ended last year with the first ore shipment in more
than two decades, and now the International Monetary Fund is
talking about economic growth of 50 percent in 2012.
Such eye-popping statistics are sure to be the talk of Cape
Town next week, when investors and mining officials from across
Africa rub shoulders at the biggest annual industry jamboree on
the continent.
But they are also a reminder of the wrenching forces that
big mining investment can unleash in countries in Africa, where
nearly all governments already have a poor track record of
translating resource wealth into broad prosperity.
Take war-scarred Mozambique.
Continued…
