Britain’s CNM plans to relaunch Zambia nickel mine next year

South Africa's role in getting Zimbabwe's diamonds back into international trade is being slammed as "dangerous", amid revelations that government officials there have helped export millions of dollars worth of Zim diamonds. South Africa's State Diamond Trader officials admitted in parliament last week that they had helped Zimbabwe export diamonds from Chiadzwa, despite an international ban on the trade.

Unrest and strikes in Indonesia, Chile, Australia and Africa, a shortage of skilled workers in North America and rising labour costs all over the globe are quickly becoming the most serious downsides of a mining boom that started almost a decade ago. While a historically high overall jobless rate is masking spiking wages in the resources sector in the US, workers in emerging markets are shutting down operations of mining companies deemed not to be sharing record profits fairly.

Australia-based iron ore development company African Iron Limited (ASX: AKI) is pleased to announce a greater than 80% increase to the aggregate exploration target size at its 80%-owned Mayoko Iron Ore Project, located in the Republic of Congo, West Africa. Image of a drilling rig at the Mayoko Iron Ore Project, by African Iron Limited.

Reuters reports Zimbabwe could take over mines that fall short of laws requiring them to sell majority stakes to locals by September, a government minister said on Wednesday. Mineral-rich Zimbabwe has the world's second largest known platinum reserves after neighbouring South Africa and foreign miners working there include Zimplats Holdings, a unit of Impala Platinum, global mining giant Rio Tinto, and Anglo Platinum.

Perth-based coal miner Coal of Africa (LON:CZA) has secured a key environmental permit from the South African government, clearing a major hurdle on the way to restarting its Vele coking coal project. The approval will allow the company to proceed with construction work at the site following a year long delay due to environmental issues.

A new report by Global Data on the top 2011 oil and gas investment destinations claims as much as 22% of the world's undiscovered and technically recoverable oil and gas could lie within Arctic territories. Oil and mineral wealth coupled with the opening of new shipping routes are transforming cities and towns in the region. Apart from the Arctic and Canada's oil sands where new projects could up current production of 1.7m bpd by another 2.7m bpd, new discoveries in Ghana, Uganda and other parts of Africa which remain largely unexplored are also attracting billions in investment from foreign oil and gas companies.

The Sowetan reports Tanzania will begin uranium mining in its southern Selous Game Reserve, Africa’s second-largest wildlife sanctuary and a Unesco heritage site (pictured), the energy minister said Tuesday. Australia’s Mantra Resources will start mining in late 2012 in the southern part of the 54,600-square kilometre park estimated to have 53.9 million pounds of uranium oxide deposits which is worth some $2.9bn at current market prices. The minister claimed that mining would only involve about 1% of the park's overall area and that income accrued from mining would help fund upkeep of the park, but environmentalists have slammed the plan.

The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) officially embarked on strike action on Monday, following a breakdown in negotiations at the end of June, saying it would not budge on its demands for a 13% across-the-board hike, better working conditions and a ban on labour brokers. Numsa, which represents about 120 000 workers, is being joined by five other trade unions, jointly representing at least another 50 000 workers. The strike action comes hard on the heels of growing alarm among South African mines about the impact of increasing talk of nationalization from factions within the ruling party.

South Africa's Pilanesberg Platinum mining operations remain halted more than a week after employees of a contractor disrupted operations through intimidation of supervisors, industrial action and damage to property and equipment. The company said in a statement released on Monday its concentrator has operated at full capacity throughout and produced a record amount of metal in June. Platmin has lost a tenth of its value on the Toronto bourse since halting operations and is down more than 40% over the last twelve months. The mid-tier producer has a market capitalization of some $510m.