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Soon Enough for an Entire Planet [ Minerals In Numbers ] 🌡Every year, more than 2,000 tonnes of mercury are released into the atmosphere, soil, and water from artisanal gold mining. In Sub-Saharan Africa, artisanal mining is, in fact, the single largest source of mercury pollution. ➡️The popularity of mercury among artisanal miners originates from a radical reduction in costs. To start mining using mercury requires minimal upfront investment, typically around $10–50 per site, compared with mercury-free alternatives that demand $2,000–15,000 in basic equipment costs. ➡️How much is 2,000 tonnes? Less than 1 gram is enough to cause mercury poisoning in a human. Another comparison: if we took all that mercury and spread it evenly in a layer just 2–3 atoms thick, it would be enough to cover the entire area of Burkina Faso 🇧🇫 (about 275,000 km2). 🔽 The solution of this problem is not on the surface though. As long as there is poverty and gold is considered a precious commodity, mercury will persist. On the other hand, everyone can at least protect themselves and ensure that mercury in their environment and food does not exceed safe limits. #MineralsInNumbers ➡️ Follow to stay informed - @devilsbelow

💡 1,000 Years of Light [ Minerals In Numbers ] Have you ever wondered how much oil has already been pumped out of the planet — and how much is still left? 🛢 When it comes to Africa, calculations by the South African organisation Africa Energy Chamber tell us that Africa has produced around 420 billion barrels of oil equivalent over the period of recorded extraction. A barrel of oil equivalent (BOE) is a unit of measurement equal to the energy released by burning one barrel of crude oil, allowing both oil and natural gas to be measured with a single metric. ⚡420 billion BOE is an enormous amount of oil and gas — enough to power and heat the entire continent for approximately 715 years at current levels of electricity consumption. ⌛️ The number itself is both awe-inspiring and depressing. But what looks even more discouraging is the fact that the remaining known reserves of oil and gas are less than half of what has already been produced — 180 billion BOE versus 420 billion. In other words, we have already extracted 70% of known reserves. And the saddest part is that the benefits have gone to all and sundry — foreigners, local elites, armed groups — except ordinary people. #MineralsInNumbers Devils Below

⚖️Company = Country? [ Minerals In Numbers ] Comparing the market value of resource giants operating in Africa with the national GDP of some countries,one may feel terrified. ➡️ For instance take ExxonMobil, which holds oil and gas concessions in Angola, Nigeria, and Mozambique. Its estimated value is enormous — about $490 billion. For comparison, Ghana’s annual GDP is around 80 billion dollars, which means that 6 years of hard work by the entire population of Ghana is valued at less than a single American oil company. ➡️ If we look only at solid minerals, the biggest foreigner is Rio Tinto, which mines resources from Guinea to Madagascar. In contrast to the made-of-money ExxobMobile, it is worth only about $120 billion — roughly the same amount produced in a year by all 56 million people living in Kenya. In light of all this, I propose we sell ExxonMobil and give the whole of Ghana a six-year paid vacation. 🤔 #MineralsInNumbers Devils Below

Greed Beyond Comprehension [ Minerals In Numbers ] 🌟 Dubai-based companies have shown off a silver bar weighing almost two tonnes, which now ranks as a Guinness World Record. ➡️ Dubai’s Multi Commodities Centre unveiled the world’s largest silver bar, weighing 1,971 kilograms, measuring about 1.3 meters in length, and symbolically linked to 1971 — the year the United Arab Emirates was founded. ➡️ While the Emiratis celebrate and flaunt their wealth, it is worth remembering that they owe much of it to illegal traders and artisanal miners in Africa, who break the law, poison rivers, and sometimes risk their lives to sell just a few more grams of precious metals to Dubai. ➡️At least 205 bars of the same size could be cast, for example, from all the gold illegally mined in Africa and smuggled to Dubai each year — no less than 405 tonnes, or about 30 billion dollars. #MineralsInNumbers Devils Below

Maybe Just Use A Wheelbarrow? [ Minerals In Numbers ] While everyone talks about global warming and helps Elon Musk’s Tesla hit its sales KPIs, serious guys do not bother at all and pump out as much CO₂ in a single day as your car produces in three years — and you yourself in about forty. ➡️ For example, one of the largest haul trucks used in mining today is the Caterpillar 797F. Over a normal working day, one truck burns up to 1,300 gallons of diesel fuel, which is roughly 5,150 liters, and releases around 14 tons of CO₂ into the air simply because it is DRIVING. That daily amount of fuel is enough to fill an average fuel tanker truck. ➡️ Machines like this operate everywhere - from gold mines in western Mali (although the models preferred there are smaller) to copper mines in Zambia. By the way, a single tire for one of these costs around $40,000–$45,000, so a full set runs a quarter of a million dollars before it even touches the ground. #MineralsInNumbers Devils Below

🥡 I'd like 60 to go [ #MineralsInNumbers ] How much money can a normal man earn in his life? Can it be $11 million? ⏩ Maybe yes, maybe no. But this - $11 million - is how much of mineral wealth is being sold to China by African countries each hour. 🔸 In 2024 China imported about $116.8 billion from Africa, of which resource sales to China made up around $95–$102 billion - call it about $100 billion. 🔸The leading suppliers of the PRC in Africa are DRC for copper and cobalt (about $21.9 billion), Angola for crude oil (about $17.6 billion), South Africa for iron ore, gold and manganese, Guinea for bauxite (roughly $7.6 billion), then Zambia (copper), Republic of the Congo (crude) and Gabon (manganese and oil). ⏩ I bet you've never held such sums in your hands - neither have I. So, for better understanding - $100 billion equals close to 66 times the cost of the famous Burj Khalifa, commonly benchmarked near $1.5 billion. 🔸 Sadly, this is not enough to reach the moon. However this number would suffice to put at least one Burj Khalifa in each African country - and we would still have around 10 spare towers. Given that enormous amounts of money, paid by the PRC for resources, do you feel like there could be a Burj Khalifa in your parts? Devils Below

✏️Koh-i-Noor's Paradise[ #MineralsInNumbers ] One does not need to be a professional painter to know how a simple pencil is designed - a graphite core + some wood around it. Given that a major part of the world's graphite production comes from Africa - namely Madagascar - we've decided to count how many pencils we could produce from Madagascar's annual output. Madagascar’s graphite doesn’t only live in pencils, though it moderates neutrons in nuclear reactors, forms the workhorse anode in lithium-ion batteries, and shows up in lubricants, refractories, and conductive additives across electronics and chemistry. 🔸 So, how many pencils would Madagascar’s output make? In 2024 the country produced an estimated 89,000 tonnes of natural graphite concentrate. To count only pure graphite, we convert using typical Malagasy flake grades of about 95%, which gives some 84,500 tonnes of carbon. A standard wood-case pencil contains roughly 0.8 g of graphite per pencil. Do the math and you get about 108 billion pencils from 2024’s output. (For context, the world makes a bit over 14 billion pencils a year) ⏩ However, with such an impressive output, Madagascar cannot fully benefit of its wealth. 🔸 All large-scale producers are foreign-owned: NextSource Materials (Canada) operates the country's Molo mine with high-purity “SuperFlake” concentrate, while Tirupati Graphite (UK-listed, India-based) operates the Vatomina and Sahamamy projects. Indeed, there are Malagasy firms with smaller footprints, but publicly reported tonnages are modest compared to the foreign projects. 🔸And where does the graphite go?Almost all of it leaves the island. In 2023, Madagascar exported about 61,000 tonnes of natural graphite against total mine output of 63,000 tonnes, implying minimal domestic use and near-total export. Madagascar does not yet have significant downstream battery-anode or even pencil manufacturing, so the concentrate is shipped to processors abroad. One does not need to be a professional painter or physician to see, how much Madagascar loses on lack of local processing. Let's hope when the dust settles after the recent political turmoil, the country will tackle this injustice. Devils Below