* Africa MA expected to accelerate this year -report
* More investor-friendly climate encourages trend
* Small developers still dominate in the continent
By Cameron French
TORONTO, March 6 (Reuters) – At the massive
Prospectors and Developers convention, it’s not hard to find a
table full of mining executives huddled in conversation, their
voices muffled by the din of thousands of participants at the
event.
With gold prices steady above $1,650 an ounce and a growing
number of juniors producing in Africa, it is increasingly likely
that those discussions might be about acquisitions in places
like Burkina Faso or Ivory Coast.
“Africa’s become … a really significant place for new
business, like the new frontier,” said Peter Leon, head of the
Africa mining and projects practice at Webber Wentzel, a
Johannesburg law firm.
In a report released just before this week’s PDAC conference
in Toronto – the world’s largest mining gathering –
PriceWaterhouseCoopers said it expects the continent to emerge
as one of the most important mining MA geographies of 2012 with
“substantial” acquisition volumes.
“Unparalleled resource potential and an increasingly
investor-friendly climate are two of the drivers of this view,”
PwC global mining leader Tim Goldsmith said in the report, which
calls for record global mining MA volumes in 2012.
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