Congolese President Denis Sassou Nguesso welcomed Patrice Motsepe to Brazzaville on 24 April, but the South African president of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) was not in town to talk football.

Motsepe was in the Republic of the Congo to brief the president on the progress made on the Hinda phosphate plant, 40 km from Pointe-Noire. “This is a project in which we are going to make a significant investment,” Motsepe said, assuring Congolese authorities that the production site would be up and running in May 2025.

Hinda mine jumpstart

African Rainbow Capital (ARC) – Motsepe’s investment fund launched in 2017 – will inject $600m into the project, which is supervised by Kropz, a mining subsidiary in which ARC has an 81% stake. In its 2023 annual report, Kropz set itself the goal of producing phosphate in Congo and exporting it “at low cost”. The company has a 25-year operating licence, obtained in 2015.

Work on the Hinda mine has stalled for six years. The gigantic deposit, with estimated reserves of 650m tonnes of phosphorus pentoxide, requires a major investment. According to Africa Business+, an initial feasibility study concluded that an investment of $355m was needed to launch the plant, which is expected to produce 1m tonnes of phosphate per year. The project is expected to create around 500 new jobs directly in the Hinda district.

Outside of Congo, ARC also owns the Elandsfontein mine in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province. Here again, conditions are difficult: the heavy rains that hit the country in 2023 flooded the mine, complicating the miners’ work and causing the company to lose some $5.7m.