John McDermott
speaker
167 appearances
3 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2026
last heard 1 Jun
John McDermott’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 2.
Appearances
But I'm not just here to admire the view, I'm here because underneath the ground is perhaps the world's most valuable store of untapped nickel, a critical mineral that has uses from stainless steel to electric vehicle batteries.
Those deposits have been in the ground for more than a billion years and known about for at least fifty.
Yet they've never been dug up.
But all that could be about to change.
In the West it's because
Most of the global nickel supply chain is dominated by China, or rather, Chinese firms operating in Indonesia.
And this potential mine, Kabanga, which is operated by Lifezone Metals, a firm that's listed on the New York Stock Exchange, is probably the single best alternative source of supply.
But it doesn't just matter for the West, it also matters for the Tanzanian government because it wants to show that it can get big economic projects off the ground.
On the face of it, Tanzania is one of the best performing economies in the region, tends to grow five, six, perhaps even seven percent a year.
But it should probably be growing even faster.
And one of the reasons why it hasn't is because
Things can be pretty slow to move in the country.
And under President Simiya Suluhu Hassan, she is keen, especially in light of some post-election unrest last year, to show that she can make some progress on these big projects.
And that's partly for Tanzanians themselves, but it's also because she feels under diplomatic pressure to.
Do so.
America basically, and this is where you get into the bigger story.
So the second Trump administration is taking unprecedented steps to try and loosen what it sees as China's stranglehold on critical mineral supply chains.
And Africa is a big part of that plan.
So what you're seeing is the administration using various tools that were previously to do with
independent ends being used to further its commercial goals.
Showing 121–140 of 167 · page 7 of 9
← Previous
Next →