Phosphate and Mali
In Mali, as has also been reported here on Investor Intel, that government’s Institute for Rural Economic Development has been working with Great Quest Metals, the results of their work showing that the company’s direct application fertilizer is an effective replacement for much costlier imported chemical phosphate across the full range of crops and regions of the North African state.The trials using Mali’s phosphate resources provided results for all of Mali’s most important crops: cotton, maize (corn), rice (irrigated, upland and lowland varieties), millet, sorghum, cowpea (or black-eyed pea), and peanuts using GQ blends of enriched high grade (35% P2O5) and enriched medium grade (27% P2O5).
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Mali actually had a phosphate mine that operated between the 1970s and into the early 1990s. Since then efforts to get new mines to exploit the substantial resources have founded due to either downturns in the global economy, falls in the phosphate price and — in the case of Mali — the invasion by Islamic insurgents, which was effectively stopped by French and other forces. But in 2009, for example, Mali could afford to import only 70,000 tonnes of fertilizer, but that was enough for just 10% of the 2.7 million hectares of arable land in the country. However, fingers crossed, Great Quest and the Mali government may show that such public-private co-operation can really work.
Northern Mali has a drought at the moment. So does Kenya; there President Uhuru Kenyatta has announced a reduction in prices of subsidized fertilizer to spur productivity and close the cycle of food shortages.
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