00:00welcome to another edition of business africa i'm your host afolake will we the top stories
00:10this week congo resists u.s push for minerals demands local value and development in global
00:16green energy freeze tunisian biotech startup turns 5 000 tons of invasive blue crab waste
00:24into sustainable pharmaceutical grade kytosan africa embraces sustainable fertilization to boost
00:32yield safeguard soils and harness the potential of its vast untapped farmland the democratic republic
00:41of congo home to most of the world's cobalt has become the epicenter of a global tug of war for
00:47critical minerals as the u.s crabbles to secure supplies for clean energy while kinshasa insist
00:54it won't auction its resources without guarantees of local benefit have a look the united states is
01:03facing a growing critical minerals crisis demand for cobalt copper and lithium needed for electric
01:09vehicles and clean energy is soaring yet washington relies heavily on imports from china which recently
01:15imposed stringent export restrictions in response to u.s tariff increases on chinese products
01:22africa home to nearly a third of the world's critical mineral reserves has been singled out as
01:27part of the solution the democratic republic of congo which produces more than 70 percent of the
01:34world's cobalt is at the heart of this debate earlier this year kinshasa considered a minerals deal
01:39with washington as part of a wider arrangement to boost security and counter the perceived threat from
01:44neighboring rwanda but president felix chichigedi has now drawn a red line he says congo will not
01:51auction its resources to the u.s or any other partner instead kinshasa is pushing for strategic
01:57partnerships that prioritize local value addition infrastructure investment and community development
02:03while managing challenges such as insecurity and illicit trade in the east
02:07with the world's clean energy future at stake congo now sits at the center of a global minerals chess
02:16board the question is how can it transform this mineral wealth into lasting national prosperity without
02:23repeating the mistakes of the past
02:28to discuss this findings mr jimpy landry a partner in illusions consulting joins us from kinshasa thank you for
02:35joining us on the show now in talks with the us what should congo prioritize in mineral deals the first
02:42thing is we need to push for more local value addition not just raw or export but um initiatives like
02:50the zambia drc battery council initiatives that aims to build a regional battery value chain should be
02:56pushed more we should be pushing for more of this kind of initiatives the second thing that we need to
03:02look at is infrastructure investment or even co-investments so you know mining can't go without
03:08logistics and without energy so um the deal should integrate uh logistics and energy infrastructure
03:15updates and the top thing which is not the least among them is to have to make sure that all our
03:22partners be them us or anyone align with our uh esg agenda so we need to make sure that we turn we
03:32leverage these partnerships to help to make sure that our partners help us to have a better local
03:40wealth creation for the communities around the mining sites that are being explored how can president
03:47chisa kedi allow foreign investment while keeping control over congos minerals and profits so i think
03:54part of the hundreds of millions of dollars being collected on the yearly basis on mining royalties
04:00could be used to fund exploration to help the government have a better knowledge of what is on the
04:06underneath our feet and give them leverage to go beyond the 20 that is being imposed for new
04:13projects by the 2018 mining code in the rc so having a better knowledge of our subsoil can give us that
04:20leverage to have more equity but then that brings me to the second point or the second layer i think which
04:27is more like today we have 10 to 20 ownership in mining projects but then we shouldn't just go for
04:34this minority equity we should also look for governance positions we need to have a significant
04:40position as per governance which means the state should make sure that we retain a certain level of
04:45board control board level control veto rights on some strategic decisions but also having royalties being
04:52indexed to global prices and i think what can be the third layer to this is more around ring fencing
04:59downstream production because today there is kind of opaque practices as per pricing transfer pricing is
05:06concerned so most of the operators here subsidiaries of international companies and then they leverage that
05:13to reduce the royalties they can pay in drc so we definitely need to make sure that is a certain level
05:21percentage of annual production is being processed locally or being sold through congolese run
05:29trading platforms how will global competition from china the us and other countries affect congo's
05:36mineral negotiations so this rivalry creates um negotiating leverage but it also reduces it fragments
05:44the risk when you have just one or two key partners so i think the best move for drc if the country feels
05:52like it is very difficult for them to negotiate just themselves i think what they can do is they can form
05:57uh strategic alliances uh multi-country strategic alliances like with people like zambia or even namibia that are
06:04both corporate producers to help them negotiate collectively be it for infrastructure or everything else the second thing is
06:12there is a need to diversify the buyers of the refined uh output and then there is also a need to
06:18i think develop or even build i would say local consortiums that can co-invest with international
06:25players so i mean as a demand for copper and copper intensifies uh drc must be thinking more like a
06:33strategic player or i might even say a central bank of critical minerals and not just the host country of the
06:39critical minerals mr jimpy thank you so much for your time bye on tunisia's mediterranean coast two
06:47innovators are turning an ecological menace into biotech opportunity transforming the country's invasive
06:54blue crab waste into high-value cytosine that could replace plastics in agriculture medicine and industry
07:02tunisian company kittelix is a biotechnology firm of a special kind unlike most producers kittelix
07:08that's tunisia's 100 million dollars blue crab industry for discarded shells supplying eco-friendly
07:14kittosine to local innovators in attracting interest from european beauty brands in kittelix we transform
07:21this waste through a simple process of three steps deprotonization demurization to obtain
07:27kytin and then we do a distillation to obtain kytosan that is used in many industries
07:32the initiative transforms marine waste into therapeutic molecules in tunisia we saw that
07:41every year more than 5 000 tons of blue swimming crab byproduct are discarded causing damage to our
07:48costs and communities here in visit with our unit we are able to treat more than three tons every day
07:55kittelix is driving innovation through research on kittosan's medical and anti-microbial uses positioning
08:00tunisia as a green chemistry leader in the global south our research on biomolecules of natural origin
08:09aims to find new therapeutic approaches particularly against parkinson's disease this initiative makes
08:15it possible to valorize marine waste instead of discarding it by using it to extract molecules
08:20that can be used for therapeutic purposes kittelix produces kytosan with near zero pollution
08:28certified by tunisia's environment ministry and the university medal awards
08:34africa is betting on a new generation of sustainable fertilizers to boost yields without repeating europe's
08:40century-old mistakes of soil degradation and pollution a shift that could turn the continent's vast
08:47farmland into a global food powerhouse we have expert insights in the following reports
08:53more than a century ago europe's agricultural revolution was driven by chemical fertilizers
09:01but africa was left behind today fertilizer use across sub-saharan africa remains far below
09:07the global average experts warn it's too little to boost yields yet still enough to degrade soils
09:13uh... having a new generation of ecological fertilization uh... we don't have to
09:20follow the path of the west of one hundred twenty years because we know
09:24now that uh it leads to degraded soil it uh um it leads to uh collapsing biodiversity and polluted
09:34environments so we know now it's not the right way uh to follow not the right path to follow
09:40um especially now when we we try to be care about the planet and and the climate that's the mission of
09:47the nutri afro coalition working with biotech firm tikuna its nitrogen fixing solutions stimulates natural
09:55soil bacteria and fungi to capture nitrogen from the air boosting growth without chemicals as a
10:02consequence they grow faster they grow bigger uh they outperform uh when it comes to yield the chemical
10:09fertilization at least by 20 30 percent so you also collect much more biomass uh plants have
10:18much better quality the challenge is access high prices and poor distribution once doomed fertilizer
10:24campaigns nutri afro says its product matches chemical costs but performs better africa holds 60
10:32of the world's uncultivated arable land advocates believe that with sustainable fertilization the continent
10:38could secure its own food future and emerge as a global supplier of green-based bioproducts
10:48that brings us to the end of this edition of business africa thank you for watching
10:52for more business stories and the latest updates stay tuned to africanews or visit us online at africanews.com
10:59see you next time
11:04you
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