Financing to assess the commercial viability of reprocessing gold tailings in Tanzania has been obtained by Tan Range Exploration (ASE).
The Canadian Industrial Development Agency (CIDA) has approved the $91,600 project, which will be undertaken by a Tan Range Tanzanian subsidiary and Mill-Ore Industries of Timmins, Ont.
Planned is the installation of a portable tailings reprocessing plant with the capacity to treat 200 tonnes of tailings per day; the tailings were produced by small-scale operations. CIDA helped complete a pilot study for the project.
Tan Range, active in Tanzania for about three years, is developing a number of gold, diamond and heavy mineral sands deposits there.
Attending the recent convention of the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada in Toronto, as a guest of Tan Range, was Tanzania’s minister of water, energy and minerals, Jakaya Kikwete.
Tanzania, on Africa’s east coast, was created in 1964 from the union of Tanganyika and Zanzibar. Its mineral wealth is virtually untapped. According to Kikwete, the country hosts 300 known kimberlite pipes but has only one producing diamond mine, the Williamson.
“We are blessed, in a way,” he said. “We have mineral resources that are vast but not yet exploited.”
There are no gold mines in the country but plenty of “one-man” surface mining operations. Kikwete said these unmechanized operations produced about 24 tonnes of gold in 1992; the government recovered about six tonnes of that total and the balance was smuggled out of the country.
To increase the sale of more gold from independent operators to the national bank, the government created a prospector licensing system in 1990. “The main problem is finance and technology,” Kikwete said of his country’s attempts to update its mining industry. “That is why we thought we had to open up to foreign investment.”
Tanzania opened its doors to private participation in the nation’s economy in 1986 when it reformed and liberalized its economic policies.
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