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The Indian market witnessed a massive spike in the demand for raw materials in the manufacturing sector in the late 1990s due to liberalisation, globalisation, and privatisation. This will increase the demand for various metals and metallic alloys in manufacturing high-tech machinery and goods.
Illustration by The Geostrata
The substantial depletion in the inventory will further lead to a shortfall in domestic production of these metals. Thus, the business and the government decided to explore the foreign markets for minerals that have the potential to supply the needs of a country like India while having lower costs of import and transportation than the prevailing prices. Thus, Africa became an essential supplier due to the cheaper cost of extracting minerals than its competitors.
African countries became one of India’s largest trading partners, from 5.3 billion at the start of 2001 to more than 200 billion USD in 2023, with an annual growth rate of 9.28% at its peak.
However, experts assume that this partnership has the potential to generate a combined trade of five hundred billion dollars soon. However, structural dysfunctionalities in the system have hindered achieving it. Indian business finds it difficult to set up their stations in Africa due to the restrictions, inability to acquire goods with guidelines and regulations present and lack of transparency shown by the government agencies.
This paper explores the prospect of exploration, extraction, and processing of mineral resources by India and African countries that can be utilised to develop components necessary for advanced machinery and supercomputers.
MINERAL RESOURCE UTILISATION FOR ADVANCED MACHINERY
Mineral resources can be used for microprocessor production, advanced computing and modern machinery. The advancement of machinery and automation has led to the fabrication of semiconductor chips in most of the world’s electronic devices. Semiconductor chips are produced with metals like germanium, gallium, and silicon.
African countries like South Africa, Zimbabwe, Congo, Tanzania, Cote d’Ivoire, Malawi, and Zambia have a memorandum of understanding with India in mineral extraction.
These countries also have large beryllium,vandalium and bauxite reserves, which are used as non-metal industrial minerals. This article delves into the nuanced aspects of acquiring mineral requirements with existing ecosystems along with their drawbacks and how to overcome drawbacks in the existing systems that improve in securing India’s mineral requirements of India which can further enhance its technological and mechanical advancement.
MINERAL AUCTION AND ACQUISITION
The pre-requisite model inspection before auctioning the mineral to businesses and countries. This opens the prospects of business in the auctions of minerals from Africa to check the quality and factor cost used to import that material to India to spend their resources on before going in the auction.
An independent auction and acquisition system used by the government of India can be developed as a platform that regulates and facilitates the market space by the established statutes while also upholding the business interest of consumers in this bidding process and providing government-to-government collaborations.
This system can also function as a trade window among both countries regarding minerals resources and heavy metals in future references. These platforms can increase the potential of acquiring untapped mineral ore in the middle of the African continent, which will lead to the discovery of advanced metallic chips that can be used to enhance existing computer systems and electronics.
CUSTOM AND LOGISTICS DEVELOPMENT
The logistics of shipping the minerals from Africa have incurred heavy losses for the government and the business. This is also coupled with the fact that minerals imported from African countries need help processing through customs and regulations due to differences in the standard of inspection procedures and grading scales.
Thus, a joint intergovernmental logistics portal with African countries with standards enforced by the International Union of Mining and Minerals (ICMM) can be established to get clearance to ship these minerals to India.
There can also be cooperation in designating ports in India and African countries that can dock enormous quantities of the minerals shipped from both sides as ports of entry.
This helps in the efficient storage of the mineral resources which need to go through the process of refining in other parts of the country while also allowing the transfer of goods in a streamlined manner. This helps regulate counterfeit or cheap substitutes of the minerals, which may have gone further into reefing and processing to be sold in the market as a finished good.
The government can also set a monetary security policy to protect exporters who may incur loss due to their shipment being destroyed or tampered with because of any unforeseen circumstances.
INDIA-AFRICA JOINT MINERAL EXPLORATION IN THE INDIAN OCEAN REGION
Advancements in technology have spiked the demand for minerals that are used in the production of semiconductors. This has started a system of extracting more minerals to meet the need than what can be replenished. Noticing this, governments worldwide began to search for alternative sources of these mineral ores.
The Indian Ocean is one of the largest ocean bodies, with more than 95% undiscovered.
The 5% discovered contains a vast repository of minerals like gallium, germanium, and silicon. Scientists have also traced rare earth minerals in high demand due to their use in electronic devices. India and its African partners set joint exploration of the ocean beds with people with expertise in the science and technological fields and advanced machinery to extract the minerals.
The governments of these countries also need to allocate resources for a joint working group of institutions that specialise in geology and mineral studies to map the ocean floor and to expand the academic fields in developing these minerals into raw materials and their application in the production function of goods.
The working group can also help build devices or models that can be used to extract the resources from the ocean bed without causing hindrances to the ocean ecosystem.
CONCLUSION
Minerals and Hydrocarbon resources have always been the primary fuel in the energy sector and an important discovery in the scientific evolution of society and continue to this day. This is expected to increase due to the rapid digitisation of human civilisation and plays a vital role as raw materials of components used in electronic devices like semiconductors.
The resources in African countries and India open an avenue toward a cooperation to explore and extract them as raw materials and transform them into goods to improve productional capacity, including developmental and cumulative growth for both countries.
BY PRAJWAL V SHYLAN
TEAM GEOSTRATA
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