Malawi Minerals To Create Jobs In Poland

…848 Billion Kwacha to be invested in Poland processing plant …Mkango scheme to spirit out Songwe rare earths …Mutharika’s Executive Order Number 2 thrown to the dogs While millions of young people in Malawi are waking up daily to the harsh reality of unemployment and economic hardship, natural resources extracted from the local soil are positioned to drive high-tech industrial development and high-paying jobs over 8,000 kilometers away in Central Europe, Poland. According to technical disclosures regarding the Songwe Hill Rare Earths project in Phalombe, operated by Canadian firm Mkango Resources through its local outfit, Lancaster Exploration, the local mine is set to offer local Malawians crumbs while the main steak is to be enjoyed overseas before powering industries in the US. Under the project structure disclosed by the developers, operations at the Songwe Hill site in Phalombe will be confined strictly to open-pit mining, crushing, flotation, and preliminary washing. These basic processes are only designed to extract an unrefined intermediate compound known as Mixed Rare Earth Carbonate (MREC). In an update published by the United States International Development Finance Corporation, Mkango will not be processing the compound in Malawi but will instead be shipping the unrefined substance to Mozambique before spiriting it out to Puławy, Poland, in Central Europe. In Puławy, Mkango has partnered with Polish chemical giant Grupa Azoty to construct a state-of-the-art separation plant which is valued at US$ 212 million (about 848 billion Malawi Kwacha at the prevailing rate of MK4000 to 1 US$). This multi-billion facility in Poland is where the true value-addition, chemical refining, and high-tech separation of neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium, and terbium will take place. While Malawians might benefit some job opportunities from this arrangement, it will mostly be short-term roles created at the local extraction site in Phalombe that will predominantly consist of low-wage, physical labor. They are expected to be hired for basic site clearing, manual digging, security guarding, site driving, and low-level equipment maintenance. Poland, on the other hand, gets to benefit the true long-term industrial reward funded by natural resources dug out of Malawian earth. A mining expert who spoke on condition of anonymity told Malawi24 that the facility in Poland has the higher chances of generating hundreds of high-paying career opportunities for chemical engineers, metallurgists, specialized plant operators, and industrial lab technicians.