Cap with his five army general stars on his head, sunglasses profiled on his nose, Assimi Goïta wanders past the crushers, the conveyor belts and several tons of rubble of a whitish rock containing a metal coveted throughout the world : lithium. On December 15, the Malian head of the junta was in Goulamina, about 150 kilometers south of Bamako, to inaugurate a new production plant for this ore which is used in particular to produce electric batteries. Under increasing financial pressure, the military in power see this new industrial site as a boon, a way to bring in the money that is missing from their coffers.
Behind this project, a Chinese company, listed on the Shenzhen and Hong Kong stock exchanges, which will use this ore to manufacture batteries in China: Ganfeng Lithium. Like other foreign companies, it has not escaped the tightening imposed by the junta in the mining sector. Since coming to power through a coup d’état in 2020, General Goïta and his putcho-sovereignist comrades have undertaken its restructuring by adopting a new mining code. Among its new provisions: up to 30% of the shares of each mine for the State, a significant increase in all taxes and the obligation for each company to pay its profits into a bank account in Mali.
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