Liberia Backs Ivanhoe Atlantic Rail Deal to Unlock Iron Ore Mine
December 19th, 2025
Via Bloomberg, a report on an export railway key to building an iron ore mind in Guinea: A US company, Ivanhoe Atlantic Inc., took a key step toward building an iron ore mine in Guinea after lawmakers in Liberia ratified an agreement allowing the firm to access an export railway. The access arrangement permits Ivanhoe […]
Read more »The Promise of Simandou: A Giant Iron-Ore Mine Could Bring Guinea Riches or Ruin
December 16th, 2025
Via The Economist, a look at how a giant iron-ore mine could bring Guinea riches or ruin – depending on how the country’s junta uses the windfall: Underneath a ridge in the southern highlands of Guinea, a west African country of 14m people, lies one of the world’s biggest deposits of iron ore. Mining of the […]
Read more »China’s Massive African Mine Threatens to Upend Iron Ore Market
November 5th, 2025
Via Bloomberg, commentary on how the size and richness of the Simandou deposit in Guinea could shift the industry’s power dynamics and help transform the nation’s economy: In April 1998, a young geologist and his team set out from the village of Moribadou and trekked for six hours through the Guinea Highlands, a densely forested […]
Read more »Guinea: Key for Countering China’s Gallium Dominance?
August 15th, 2025
Guinea may be small in geography, but it sits atop vast mineral wealth. It holds the world’s largest bauxite reserves and is well-positioned to become a major supplier of gallium—a critical mineral required for semiconductors but whose exports China has restricted. As this short video shows, Guinea has been on the U.S. minerals map since […]
Read more »Will the World’s Biggest Mining Project Help Guinea?
February 25th, 2025
Via The Economist, commentary on a very large planned mining project in Guinea: “This is the last thing we need,” said my wife when I returned home with a fertility totem. It was one of the stranger things this father of three children—and no more, thank you very much—has received from an African politician. The […]
Read more »Be Kennedy, Not Kissinger: What Cold War Competition in Guinea and Angola Can Teach Us About U.S. Influence in Western Africa
October 6th, 2024
Via War On The Rocks, commentary on what Cold War competition in Guinea and Angola can teach current policymakers about U.S. influence in Western Africa: Since 2020, a number of African governments have distanced themselves from the United States and its allies while deepening ties with Russia and its Wagner Group mercenaries. Moscow has ramped up its […]
Read more »Focusing primarily on The New Seven Sisters - the largely state owned petroleum companies from the emerging world that have become key players in the oil & gas industry as identified by Carola Hoyos, Chief Energy Correspondent for The Financial Times - but spanning other nascent opportunities around the globe that may hold potential in the years ahead, Wildcats & Black Sheep is a place for the adventurous to contemplate & evaluate the emerging markets of tomorrow.