The Minister of Mines and Steel Development, Dr Kayode Fayemi and his South African counterpart, Mr Mosebenzi Zwane (MP), have reopened a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on a mining collaboration signed in 2013 and endorsed a two-year implementation plan beginning from next year.

The plan which is a follow up to the meeting between President Muhammadu Buhari and the South African President, Jacob Zuma, earlier in the year, is scheduled to commence in January 2017 and will be concluded by December 2018.

Also present at the meeting were the Minister of State for Mines and Steel Development, Hon Abubakar Bawa Bwari, top officials of the Nigerian Ministry of Mines and Steel Development, while the South African High Commissioner to Nigeria, Lulu Louis Mnguni, was also accompanied by other top officials of the South African Ministry of Mineral Resources.

The MoU also aligned the activities to support the cooperation in mining and minerals development with the respective national priority programmes of both countries including diversification of the economy and job creation that span energy security, industrialisation and advancement of agricultural development in the context of food security programme.

Addressing journalists after the meeting, Fayemi and Zwane said they were optimistic that the economic and technical cooperation between the two countries in the areas of geology, mining and mineral processing, among others, would advance the economies of both countries.

A communiqué issued at the end of the meeting identified 10 strategic areas of cooperation which include geology, regulatory framework and licensing; mineral processing; metallurgy; artisanal and small scale mining; investment promotion; and capacity building.