CHICAGO – Mining Indaba LLC has lined up Niall Ferguson, economic historian and bestselling author of Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World to be a keynote speaker at the 17th annual Investing in African Mining Indaba. The event takes place in Cape Town, South Africa, Feb. 7-10, 2011.
Ferguson, a professor of history at Harvard University, will address the world’s leading mining investment conference, which attracts the most senior representatives of the global mining industry. The title of his address will be “The Ascent of Africa and Her Minerals” as Ferguson unpacks the back story on the new scramble for Africa’s mineral wealth.
The financial revolution that has propelled China from poverty to power in a single generation has raised the risks and opportunities for Africa, which remains one of the last and greatest frontiers in mineral exploration and extraction. Ferguson will position Africa and her mineral wealth in his view that we are at the end of major time passage.
''I think it is reasonable to assume that we are living through the end of an epoch,” Ferguson says. “Something that is really the end of 500 years of history.” He adds, “The great question is whether I'm right in believing that we're living through the end of the pre-eminence of the West … and the end of Western civilization as we know it. “
In addition to Ferguson’s keynote address, conference attendees will hear the perspective and insights of more than a dozen experts starting with the commodity outlook and review day. Topics and speakers include:
Copper, Walter DeWet; coal, Gerard McKloskey; nickel, lead and zinc, Don Smale; diamonds, Chaim Evan-Zohar; platinum group metals, Stephen Forrest; gold, James Turk; world and Africa outlook, David Hale; reminiscences of a commodity bull, Graham Birch; the state of the commodity cycle, Frank E. Holmes; China and Africa, Kobus van der Wath; and official welcome, Susan Shabangu, minister of mineral resources of South Africa.
Corporate social responsibility day will take place in association with the International Council on Mining and Metals and dozens of additional corporate, government, NGO and multilateral agency presentations and events are planned.
The four-day event provides investment previews for and networking opportunities among an expected 4,000 stakeholders in the global mining value chain and its connection with Africa.
For more information on the conference program and to register, go to www.MiningIndaba.com. For media credentials or media partnerships, please contact Maria Palombini at mpalombini@miningindaba.com or +1 212 557 7485.
