While South Africa was the world’s biggest producer of gold for decades, production has slumped as its deposits get deeper and more expensive to access.
While Zimbabwe has the world’s third-biggest reserves of platinum-group metals, plus gold, diamond and chrome mines, development has been stymied by political instability.
The question of what happens to Russia’s metal exports is of vast consequence to global markets -- it’s a key supplier of palladium, nickel, aluminum, steel and copper.
