Гасан Рамазанов, эксперт Института Гайдара, пояснил «Прайм», что возможность сотрудничества между Гвинеей-Бисау и Россией по вопросу добычи редкоземельных металлов обусловлена наличием крупных запасов бокситов в африканской стране.
«By various estimates, about 25% of the world’s known bauxite reserves are located in Guinea-Bissau, that is, around 17 million tons. Bauxite ore, in turn, contains a number of rare earth elements, including yttrium, neodymium, lanthanum, praseodymium and gadolinium," Gasan Ramazanov said.
Despite Guinea-Bissau’s large bauxite reserves, there is no talk about independent mining of rare earth metals by local companies, because extraction is a complex technological process that the country cannot afford singlehandedly in economic terms. For this reason, cooperation with the Russian Federation, which is interested in expanding its rare earth mining capacity is a necessary step to start the mining and processing of minerals, Gasan Ramazanov explained.
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