To be conspiratorial - who was giving Tanzania such terribly bad advice?

A little story from the world of metals. Indiana Resources has just won an arbitration case against the government of Tanzania. The full announcement is here. Pretty open and shut case in fact, effectively the government nicked a nickel mine and didn’t pay compensation for having done so.

But there was something of a pattern of this in Tanzania. The previous President, John Magufuli, had a habit of insisting that the mining companies were ripping the country off. Maya Forstater (yes, that lady, of beliefs in gender fame) describes the Acacia Mining case here. To convey the meaning without the reading the claim was entirely ridiculous. Either so grossly misinformed as to be delusional or entirely made up.

At which point who has been, or was at least, purveying such nonsense to Magufuli? We do suspect that it was some NGO or suchlike advisor but we’ve no idea who at all. Whoever it was has just cost Tanzanian taxpayers $100 million and change in the compo that now needs to be paid to Indiana Resources.

What we particularly relish is that it’s possible to take the story one layer deeper. Unconnected - entirely unconnected - with the Tanzania case there was the one about Zambian copper export revenues. This analysis was performed by Alex Cobham while at the Centre for Global Development. It was ludicrously wrong, something pointed out by Maya Forstater (with a very small assist from one of us here). Cobham then left CGD to go and run the Tax Justice Network (a step up for that organisation, previously it was Professor Richard Murphy). This meant space at CGD for a researcher which is where Ms Forstater landed - and yes, the same CGD that was the defending employer in the recent case about gender. Which we do think is cute.

However, back to the larger point. Someone, somewhere, has clearly been feeding gross misinformation to the Tanzanian government over mines and mineral deposits. That misinformation has - just so far, as this one case emerges from arbitration - cost Tanzanian taxpayers that $100 million and change. Don’t you think we should hunt down whoever caused this catastrophic loss and make them pay the bill?

Even if nothing else we do think that causing some sleepless nights for those who purvey entirely ghastly advice - so obviously wrong that Tanzania’s own appointment to the arbitration board ruled against them which is how we read the statement that the decision was unanimous - to poor country governments would be a good idea. Being wrong for good reason is forgivable, but if we can find who it was we can ask their reasons and find out whether they were good.

Or, to put this another way, those who’ve been misleading poor country governments over mineral claims and values should be made to sweat a little, no?