During the period May 3-21, 2001, I had the opportunity to explore the
"Gold Coast" of Ghana, Africa with Mr. Michael Hibbard, president of Marine
Mining Corp., a company which is developing a large
off-shore mining concession, extending over 240 kilometers along the shallow
continental shelf of Ghana, West Africa. The concession has a total area of
10,000 kilometers.
Ghana... what a fantastic place... great, hard working, beautiful people
and the countryside is spectacular... much opportunity too, for all, Ghanaians
and Canadians alike. They are very much like us (English speaking as they are an
old British colony, now having achieved independence) but have been repressed
for so long by cheap media hype about their problems. Very little news of the
good, honest, everyday things (things that do not sell newspapers) gets
out.
Marine Mining asked me along on the trip to provide aggregate expertise
since there is a great need in this struggling, growing and, yet, thriving
country for material to build roads, water treatment facilities, hospitals,
schools and homes. Their offshore holdings will likely provide millions,
if not billions of tonnes of sands and gravels for these projects and much, much
more as they will be extracting from the aggregate gold, diamonds,
micro sapphires and many precious metals and rare earths needed in medical
research and many other world-wide applications.
I believe strongly that offshore aggregate extraction will play a major
part in the future of the aggregate industry worldwide in areas where such
deposits as this one exist. I consider myself very lucky to have seen this part
of Africa first-hand and most importantly, to have encountered this project.
I would be glad to hear from anyone in the aggregate or related industries
that has an interest in learning more about this fascinating project.
