Emotan Josephine Aburime-Shine is the managing director of Piramen Ventures, a sub division of Global Ventures Limited. An entrepreneur with a passion for creating change, she speaks with BusinessDay’s Harrison Edeh, in this interview, on how the company is advancing value addition in the mining sector.
Tell us a few things on your mining activities.
We are a basically a mining company. Emotan Global Ventures Limited focuses on the metal side, lead, gold and other minerals and Piramen focuses on the gemstone side of mining and we have several gemstones like sapphire, ruby, and aquamarine on several sites. Our project is to uncover as many gemstones as possible that we can find in Nigeria.
Do you add value to some of these minerals you have mentioned?
A lot of these minerals, when they are taken in their raw forms, have little value. When you sell in the raw form, the money you get is very little. So it is almost slave labour when you sell in its raw state, but the moment you add value by processing it a little, where you cut the stones into some of the gemstone shapes, you have a better share of the profit margin that comes out of it. At the moment, Nigeria or Africa is getting less than a percent of the value they ought to get because they don’t add value to it. So we are losing a lot of revenue as individuals and as a country because of that lack of value addition. So, we need to close that gap and change the narrative because our people are just suffering and working for free. They suffer and mine these minerals and sell them at ridiculous prices. We can’t continue like that. The values of these stones are a lot more than we are getting from them. So we want everybody to be educated in the fact that these stones are valuable and we can change the prices we get by adding value to them.
Nigeria Mining Week has just ended. What are your takeaways from the event?
It is amazing being part of a conference like this. First of all, everybody gets to meet each other— the big players in the industry. You get to interact with the government and hear all the projects they are trying to do, because sometimes you don’t really know. So at the Nigeria Mining Week like this, we have time to interact with government and tell them our issues and problems. And from what I have gathered, there are a lot of initiatives they are doing to support miners such as loans and grants. Also, they are putting certain things in place and bring in companies that can train. I have to commend the fact that government has become more aware of the sector and they are rising up to the challenges and getting up to the same standards as the rest of the world.
Do you think Nigeria has the commitment and financial muscles like other mining African countries?
I think that Nigeria will always become a major player in the mining industry. Because in the past, there were underground mining happening, but now that everyone is coming up to make the industry more visible, we think that is going to be the beginning of the kind of influx we want into the sector. Because if people know what we have here, there will be a lot of people coming into the country and that brings in money from travels. Hospitality industry and other industries will benefit if we do this mining right.
You are a woman in a sector regarded as exclusive and even tough for men. How are you coping?
Women are tougher than men. Have you not discovered we are the champions?
But the minerals are mined in the forest and bushes, how do you think women can cope in terms of stress?
Women tend to be in the different side of mining. Some are into selling, some in the cutting and faceting of the stones. There are different stages, not just one. When it comes to the rough work, they may be a lot more men there, but there are women in the bushes too.
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