The portal will focus on Jinja within the Greenstone Belt, east of Kampala, where gold, base metals, phosphates, rare earth elements and vermiculite are being sought; and Mbarara southwest of Kampala, which has the potential for gold and base metals such as copper, lead, nickel and zinc.
New data portal promoting mining in Uganda
A New Zealand company specializing in geosciences, modeling and collaborative technologies has the Uganda Geoscience Data Portal Primarily aimed at promoting the exploration of minerals and supporting better decision-making in the early stages of production in the country.
The company, Seequent, is supported by an international consortium that seeks, from a broader perspective, to enhance the geoscientific understanding of the Jinja and Mbarara regions in Uganda, in order to promote sustainable socio-economic investment.
The portal will focus on Jinja within the Greenstone Belt, east of Kampala, where gold, base metals, phosphates, rare earth elements and vermiculite are being sought; and Mbarara southwest of Kampala, which has the potential for gold and base metals such as copper, lead, nickel and zinc.
The portal provides geoscientific data freely to encourage investment. At the same time, the data resources will benefit environmental and spatial planning, water management and sustainable energy development such as geothermal energy.
The pilot project, part of the African Resource Geoscience Initiative (ARGI), was facilitated by a public-private partnership between government, industry and commercial organizations under the auspices of the African Union Commission (AUC).
The AUC promotes the integration process on the continent so that Africa can play its legitimate role in the global economy while tackling a variety of social, economic and political issues.
The pilot project in Uganda is a joint initiative of the Commission of the African Union, Geosoft Inc. (a Sequent Company), the British Geological Survey (BGS), the Uganda Directorate of Geological Survey and Mines (UDGSM) and the Uganda Chamber of Mines and Petroleum ( UCMP).
The portal is operated by the National Information and Technology Authority - Uganda (NITA-U).
“Activating Africa's vast geospatial resources by working with multiple stakeholders is key to unlocking their value for downstream economic and social benefits in each country. We look forward to working with our project partners to explore how geoscientific data can make this possible, ”says June McAlarey of Seequent.
Patrick Bell, Team Leader Information Systems at BGS, says: “This is a great opportunity to test a model in which we integrate resource data with environmental data in a development area. The availability of such a wide range of geoscientific data provides an opportunity to examine how its use can support broader applications including environmental, infrastructure and water management. "
The Uganda Geoscience Data Portal has a powerful, easy-to-use interface for delivering multidisciplinary data and documents stored in multiple systems. Interested parties can define their area of interest by searching for data, querying, previewing, and downloading data in commercial or open standard formats through shared access.
The data can be easily integrated into exploratory prospectivity analysis, exploration software packages, and other decision support packages for potential investors.
Zachary Baguma, UDGSM's Geology Commissioner, said, “This project is in line with our investment promotion efforts: we recently launched a nationwide research and data collection campaign that will be one of the means to get our data out there and attract foreign direct investment. "
The pilot project is based on the goals and principles of the Africa Mining Vision (AMV) and the 2063 agenda, which recognizes geospatial data as essential for the future development of the African sectors of raw materials, energy, agriculture, forestry, fisheries, infrastructure and tourism.
The Ugandan portal project was also supported by the National Research Council of Canada's Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC IRAP), which provided consultancy and research and development funding to Toronto-based Geosoft Inc.
The Uganda Geoscience Portal was officially launched on the 8. Annual Mineral Wealth Conference (MWC) opened by UCMP in collaboration with the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development (MEMD) at 2. and 3. October 2019 was organized in Kampala, Uganda.
Mining Review Africa / ISE - October 2019
