The Kiepersol colliery is one of the many successful South Africa-India business ventures.
South Africa and India have much to offer each other, this is the view of industry professionals and government representatives, who came together at the India South Africa Business Forum, held in Pretoria as part of the visit to South Africa in May by Indian President Pratibha Patil.
President Jacob Zuma addressed the media after his first meeting with Patil, saying that South Africa has once again extended an invitation to Indian business to invest in our infrastructure development programme, in which we are to invest more than R800-billion (US$103-billion) until 2014.
Great opportunities
Chemical engineer Tony Zebert, a South African working for Jindal Africa, said his wife thought he was crazy when he resigned from his secure job at fuel producer Sasol to join the local branch of one of India’s biggest companies.
But, said Zebert, the Jindal Africa country head in South Africa, he was convinced that there were great opportunities ahead, and he hasn’t been disappointed.
“My goal is to help make the two economies into one of the world’s powerful groupings,” he said, “as I believe they can be.”
Jindal Africa is a part of Indian multinational giant Jindal Steel and Power Limited, a leading force globally in the steel, power, mining, coal to liquid, oil and gas, and infrastructure sectors.
Jindal owns the Kiepersol thermal coal mine in Mpumalanga, from which it obtains metallurgical grade anthracite coal. The deal, concluded in 2009, marked the first completed purchase of a coal mine in South Africa by an Indian entity.
Since then, Jindal has announced that it plans to invest $300-million ($39-million) to develop new and existing mines in Africa.
“We’re here to stay,” said Zebert, “and we’re even building our own office block on William Nicol Drive.” This road runs through the business district of Sandton, north of Johannesburg, and is popular as a location for corporate headquarters because of its accessibility to Sandton and nearby freeways.
Jindal mines the coal and sends it to India for further processing.
“There are more opportunities like this,” said Zebert. “In Mpumalanga there are huge dumps of discarded, low grade coal. We just need a way to get it out of there, because India will use it.”
Steel and power are the foundations of any economy, said Zebert, and Jindal is planning to play a role in both those industries.
“We aim to build our first power plant in Botswana, and I would dearly like to build a steel mill in South Africa.”
He added that the company is looking at mining coal in Mozambique.
“This has the potential to supersede South Africa in coal exports,” he said, “and in Mozambique there are fewer restrictions – we can build and own our own railway. We’re also interested in limestone in Madagascar, and copper in Zambia.”
Johannesburg: Jindal Steel and Power, India's biggest producer of the alloy by market value, plans to spend $300 million in developing new and existing mines in Africa.
The move is part of the company's strategy to source coal assets abroad to meet raw material demand of its steel and power plants at home. Jindal Africa, the company's Africa subsidiary, would invest $250 million in developing a coalmine in Mozambique's coal-rich Moatize region, Ashish Kumar, CEO of Jindal Africa, told ET on the sidelines of an international mining meet.
He said the remaining funds would be used to expand the capacity of its mine in Piet Retief in South Africa's Mpumalanga province. Kumar said the Mozambique mine is expected to start operations this year, producing 1 million tonne of coal.
He said the company would raise its capacity to 10 mt over the next few years. The capacity of the South Africa mine would be raised from 0.8 mt to 1.3 mt by fiscal 2013, he said. The steel and power producer is expanding its footprint in Africa, a continent known for its rich and largely untapped mineral wealth.
Jindal Africa has so far acquired 30 prospecting licenses for coal, manganese , iron ore and diamonds in Tanzania, Zambia, Madagascar, Mozambique and South Africa. The group is also constructing rail and port infrastructure in Mozambique and has agreed to build a 2,600 MW thermal power plant in the country.
"We came into Africa only in 2008 and since then we have been investing in the projects," Kumar told Mining Indaba, a conference of mining companies from across the world. "It is only of late that we have decided to build our corporate brand presence across the continent ."
Jindal Africa was the first foreign company to secure a mining license in Mozambique. It was also the first to get into the difficult terrain south of Zambezi river. "Our presence there has opened up doors for many other investors to come into the region," said Manoj Gupta, country head of Jindal Africa.
"While we have made reasonable progress in Mozambique and South Africa, we are at an exploratory stage in Tanzania, Zambia and Madagascar. It will take us 2 to 3 years to take up mining there."
Nov 22 (Reuters) - India's Jindal Power & Steel will start production of coal at its project in Mozambique next year with first exports expected towards the end of that year, the company's country head for Mozambique said on Tuesday.
The company initially eyes a run of mine output of 10 million tonnes, with the option to double that in the future. The mine will produce semi-hard coking coal and thermal coal for domestic use and for exports.
"The ramp up period will be between three to five years, starting in 2012," Manoj Gupta told a conference in Maputo.
The company's mine is not linked to the Sena railway line which Vale and Rio Tinto plan to use to transport coal to the port.
Gupta said logistics constraints remained the biggest challenge for upcoming coal producers in Mozambique and any expansion will depend on the availability of rail and port capacity. He said Jindal initially plans to transport its coal with trucks over 100 km (60 miles) to link up with the Sena line. (Reporting by Agnieszka Flak, editing by Ed Stoddard)
Maputo (Mozambique) : The southwest African nation of Mozambique is selecting students to study in India under a scholarship programme recently provided by an Indian university. The scholarships are being provided by the O.P. Jindal Global University, based in Sonipat in the northern state of Haryana, state news agency AIM reported.
The scholarships were announced during a recent visit by Mozambique's first lady Maria da Luz Guebuza to India, where both sides signed an agreement on the cooperation. Carlos Mussanhane, representative of Mozambique, said the students will be travelling to India next year and the agreement will last for a period of five years. "Next year, we will start with 10 scholarships for graduate and post graduate degrees and the perspective is that scholarships should increase by five each year until the period agreed terminates," he said.
The agreement also includes law training of Mozambican staff working in rural areas and non-government organisations. Mozambique, with a population of around 23.4 million, shares its borders with the Indian Ocean, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Swaziland and South Africa. It became independent in 1975, and its capital is Maputo. The official language is Portuguese. There are approximately 20,000 people of Indian origin in Mozambique. People from Gujarat, Goa, Daman and Diu have been living in the African country for more than 500 years, according to the Indian high commission in Maputo.
The O.P. Jindal Global University is a non-profit university established in memory of O.P. Jindal by his son and member of parliament Naveen Jindal. The university has international collaborations with Harvard University, Yale University, University of Michigan, Cornell University, New York University, King's College London, University of Cambridge and many other reputed educational institutions.
It has four schools -- Jindal Global Law School, Jindal Global Business School, Jindal School of International Affairs and Jindal School of Government and Public Policy.
By IANS,
Maputo — The Jindal Global University (JGU), a private, non-profit higher education institution in India's Haryana state, has offered scholarships to Mozambican students to attend post-graduate courses.
This agreement was formalised on Wednesday through a memorandum of agreement signed by the director of the Mozambican "Our Children Our Future" Institute (ICNF), Flavia Cuereneia, and by the Vice-Chancellor of the JGU, Raj Kumar. The ceremony was witnessed by Mozambique's First Lady, Maria da Luz Guebuza, in her capacity as patron of the ICNF.
In addition to the scholarships, this cooperation envisages the training of Mozambican workers from rural areas and NGOs by members of the JGU Law Faculty who are implementing a "Model of Rural Good Governance and Citizen Participation" in more than 100 Haryana villages.
Furthermore, students from the International Relations School and other JGU faculties will come to Mozambique to work with rural development organisations, so that they can learn how African civil society is dealing with the socio-economic challenges of the continent.
Speaking to the Mozambican journalists accompanying Maria Guebuza, Cuereneia said this agreement opens a gateway of opportunities for Mozambicans to benefit from the JGU programmes.
She also expected that the memorandum will encourage further cooperation between the two countries, and allow the export of Indian technology to Mozambique.
For his part, Kumar stressed the importance of the memorandum in creating training opportunities for Mozambican students at his university. He added that the agreement will allow the sharing of experiences of rural development programmes.
During her visit, Maria Guebuza also toured the university campus and gave a lecture on "Gender and Empowerment in Mozambique".
Sonipat (Haryana) : In a first of its kind, the O.P. Jindal Global University (JGU) based here inked an agreement Wednesday with a leading non-governmental organization of Mozambique to train Mozambican grassroots workers and NGOs in India.
A Memorandum of Understanding on Human Development and Social Empowerment Initiative was inked between JGU and the Crianca Nosso Futuro Institute (C.N.F.I) of Mozambique.
The initiative is for training of Mozambican grassroots workers and NGOs by faculty members and students of Jindal Global Law School. The law school is already implementing a 'Good Rural Governance and Citizen Participation Model' in over 100 villages of Haryana.
The NGO, which works under the office of the first lady of the Republic of Mozambique Maria Da Luz Guebuza, signed the MOU in her presence here.
Delivering the Jindal global lecture on 'Gender and Empowerment in Africa', Guebuza praised the agreement with JGU as a "shining example of south-south cooperation between the educational and social service sectors of Africa and India".
"My government is committed to learning from India's experiences in uplift of downtrodden sections within a democratic system," she told the gathering here.
"The Mozambican trainees will live and work in these villages and learn best practices of how to empower vulnerable sections of society to participate in self-governance and in pursuit of justice at the lowest level in rural communities," a JGU spokesman said here.
In return, students of the Jindal School of International Affairs (JSIA) and other schools of JGU would intern in rural development organizations in Mozambique to learn how African civil society is facing up to socio-economic challenges.
"Mozambique will also nominate up to 15 Mozambican students to come to India and study in various post-graduate degree programmes offered by JGU," the spokesman said.
Member of Parliament and JGU Chancellor Naveen Jindal, who was present at the signing of the MOU, said: "Such concrete initiatives between African and Indian institutions would bring much needed developmental dividends to the masses in both our societies."
He added: "JGU is the only university in India which is entering into actionable agreements with governments in Africa and Latin America that are based on academic interaction as well as on social service."
By IANS
