East African Business Week

DARES SALAAM, TANZANIA - An Australian uranium mining company, Mantra Resources, plans to build a $400-million uranium mine in the Selous Game Reserve in Tanzania within the next three years.
According to the Government, about 34,532 hectares of land which is  0.69% of the 50,000 square kilometres is inside a world heritage game reserve (Selous Game Reserve) will be allocated for the implementation of the project.
Selous Game reserve is the second largest wildlife sanctuary oin the African continent but has huge mineral potential as well. The mining company is looking at the huge deposits estimated at 24.4 million kg of uranium oxide.
Mr William Ngeleja, the Minister for Energy and Minerals, told East African Business Week in Dar es Salaam that the exploration and other preparations are going on, but mining is scheduled to start mid 2012 or shortly after after fulfilling several conditions demanded by the UNESCO Heritage Committee.
"The Government  has sought approval from the UN World Heritage body, UNESCO, to re-demarcate the Selous Game Reserve, one of the world's largest wildlife sanctuaries, to for allow the uranium mining to be set up," said Mr. Ngeleja.
He said Tanzanian laws allow high value natural resources such as oil, gas and uranium to be mined in game reserves. But since the Selous is a World Heritage site, we have officially notified UNESCO about our plans and we are just waiting for an approval.
Ngeleja said the Government has conducted an  environmental and social impact assessment and has secured authorization from regulatory bodies.
He said the Government is confident it will get the necessary permits. The Minister said a UNESCO team would visit Tanzania for verification. "We expect to get final UNESCO clearance on the project by June 2012,"said Ngeleja.
Tanzania has at least 54-million kgs of uranium oxide deposits and expects to start mining some of the minerals.
The Selous Game Reserve uranium mine project is expected to have an annual gross turnover averaging $250-million for 15 years,
According to  Mr Ezekiel Maige, the Minister for Natural Resources and Tourism, the  Selous would benefit from an expected income of $5-million in annual fees from the uranium mine against the game reserve's current annual earnings of around $500 000, which would be used in the conservation of the wildlife population.
He said in 2010 the Government of Tanzania passed a new mining law that increases royalties paid on minerals and it mandated the Government to acquire a shareholding in future mining projects.
The Government insists that it wouldn't endorse a project if the mining would be controlled to avoid side effects of mining uranium, citing the tragedy that happened in Japan recently.
"We hope that UNESCO Heritage Committee will not halt the mining in the Game Reserve as it did recently in Serengeti National Park road project, considering the effect of the uranium activities to the environment," said the analysts.
 The Selous is home to huge number of elephants, black rhinoceros, cheetah, giraffes, hippopotamus and crocodiles, amongst many other species and bird life.
The reserve also has an exceptionally high variety of habitats including Miombo woodlands, open grasslands, riverine forests and swamps, making it a valuable laboratory for on-going ecological and biological processes.
Mantra has direct and joint venture interests in a portfolio of uranium exploration tenements in Tanzania.
The prospecting licenses and applications are largely within the highly uranium prospective Karoo-age sediments of southern Tanzania (Mkuju River Project, Mbamba Bay Project and Southern Tanzania JV's and paleochannel associated calcrete and sandstone hosted uranium targets within the Bahi catchment of central Tanzania (Bahi North Project and Handa Project).