These aren’t typical days.
South Africa on March 26 imposed a three-week lockdown to fight the
coronavirus, confining millions in their homes and shuttering most
businesses—including the mines that are the first link in a global
supply chain that passes through smartphone factories in China and auto
plants in Detroit, Turin, or Tokyo, and ends in stores and showrooms
around the world.
Even as Asia slowly reopens after its lockdown, factories there risk
running short on supplies as the virus spreads to countries that produce
vital raw materials. And nowhere is the problem a bigger issue than in
Africa, which provides the metals and minerals needed for just about
every industrial product, and where countries heavily reliant on trade
with China have been suffering from a collapse in commodity prices.
While the number of confirmed coronavirus cases across Africa remains
low compared to other parts of the world—some 7,000 cases on a
continent of 1.3 billion people—social distancing is a luxury the region
can scarcely afford. Most governments lack the resources to enforce
effective containment measures, and health systems risk buckling if the
disease reaches Africa’s crowded shantytowns and slums.
“For Africa, it will be much harder than you imagine,” said Auret van
Heerden, chief executive officer of Equiception, a supply-chain
consultancy in Geneva. “They’ve survived Ebola, they cope with malaria
and tuberculosis, but I don’t think they’ve had anything quite this
infectious.”
The African mines that produce raw materials for factories across the
globe are bracing for the arrival of the virus. In South Africa, Kumba
Iron Ore Ltd., the continent’s largest iron-ore producer, and Anglo
American Platinum Ltd. and Sibanye Stillwater Ltd., the world’s top
platinum vendors, have curtailed most of their output. Chrome and
manganese mines, which supply ingredients for steel, have been largely
shuttered.
In Luabala, a province of Democratic Republic of Congo that is a
major provider of copper and cobalt used in rechargeable batteries,
mines remain open but the workforce has been limited to essential
personnel to minimize the risk of contagion. Tenke Fungurume, a mine
owned by China Molybdenum Co., has been put into isolation, with about
2,000 people ordered to stay on-site and avoid “contact with the outside
world,” according to a memo circulated to staff.
Even facilities that keep producing risk interruptions in getting
their goods to market. In the best of times, Africa’s transport networks
are fragmented and inefficient, and its ports and customs services are
notoriously slow. Today, most African countries have closed their
borders, and several have limited internal travel or imposed lockdowns.
While cargo is usually exempted from the restrictions, increased
security controls, sanitation measures, and reduced staff at ports and
railways threaten severe delays.
Most copper and cobalt from Congo’s mines, for instance, moves via
truck through Zambia and then to ports in South Africa and Tanzania.
While cargo carriers can still cross into Zambia, new sanitation
measures have led to 25-mile backups at the border.
In Kenya, a dusk-to-dawn curfew has resulted in a pileup of goods at
ports, driving up freight costs by almost a third, according to Dennis
Ombok, chief executive of the Kenya Transporters Association, which
represents truck-fleet owners. Even though essential goods are
officially exempted, drivers are being harassed by police, Ombok said.
“It’s taking up to three days to clear at the border between Kenya
and Uganda,” he said. “The police need to tone down how they’re handling
transporters. We’re carrying food and raw materials. These are
essential.”
In South Africa, the port of Durban, the busiest in sub-Saharan
Africa and serving landlocked Zambia and Zimbabwe, limited operations to
essential cargo, and police stopped all trucks carrying other goods for
several days. On Thursday, the order was reversed to help ease massive
congestion at the port. Amid the confusion, First Quantum Minerals Ltd.,
which accounts for more than half of Zambia’s copper production, says
it has started making alternative shipping plans.
At the main crossing between Zambia and Congo, more than 1,000 trucks
carrying food, equipment, and supplies for mines had to queue last week
after a partial lockdown came into effect. For now, Zambia has managed
to convince the Mozambican government to allow trucks carrying fuel from
the port of Beira to exit Mozambique, after they were held at the
border.
“With a crisis of this magnitude,” Zambian President Edgar Lungu
warned last week, “we shall find ourselves under forced lockdown if all
our neighbors shut their borders.”
And global trade moves in many directions these days, so mines are
facing potential shortages of crucial imports needed to keep operating
as suppliers worldwide curtail production; sulfuric acid, for instance,
is critical in copper processing. Both Zambia and Namibia, which ships
copper and uranium to China, have raised the alarm over looming
shortages of key chemicals for their mines.
“Most if not all our mining companies get inputs from China,” said
Veston Malango, head of Namibia’s Chamber of Mines. “And we have not
been able to do that.”