Barrick CEO says spending $15 mln a month on Mali mine
TORONTO, May 7 (Reuters) - Barrick (ABX.TO), opens new tab CEO Mark Bristow said the miner is spending $15 million a month to keep its Mali mine running, and that he does not know where the government is keeping the gold that it confiscated from the company.
Speaking in an interview about the long-running conflict with Mali authorities, Bristow said the government walked back on an agreement three times, and called the jailing of Barrick employees in the country a human rights violation.
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S.Africa stocks suffer $3.7 billion losing streak from foreign investors
JOHANNESBURG, June 13 (Reuters) - Foreign investors have pulled $3.7 billion out of South African equities since October in the longest such streak of outflows in five years, a report showed, as the continent's biggest equity market struggles to attract international portfolio flows. International investor confidence in stocks listed in Africa's most industrialized economy has been fragile for years, with equities having suffered annual outflows since 2022, calculations by the Institute of International Finance show. But the latest streak marks a sharp acceleration, coming in at double the $1.9 billion of outflows across 2023 and 2024, the IIF said. South Africa is at risk of missing out on moves by global fund managers reallocating into regions outside of the U.S. without growth, said analysts, even as stocks trade at discount prices. "Investors are looking to diversify outside of the U.S., but that doesn't automatically (make) South Africa a primary destination," said Graham Tucker, portfolio manager at Old Mutual Investment Group. The local market was "relatively cheap", he added, but that reflected a decade of declining per capita income and depressed growth. Emerging stocks as a global asset class have suffered outflows more widely since October. But that changed in May when major emerging stock markets from Brazil to Turkey and from Taiwan to South Korea attracted fresh inflows, according to IIF data. Latin American countries are especially well-placed to benefit from the U.S. market shifts. The Johannesburg Stock Exchange has also seen higher volumes of investments in recent weeks, but rising purchases are matched by rising sales, the bourse's data shows. South African equities have delivered a 29% return in dollar terms year-to-date, placing them among the top five performers globally behind only Greece, Spain, Germany and Italy, Bank of America said. In the week to last Friday, non-residents bought more than 30 billion rand in South African stocks, the highest weekly value in years, but that also coincided with heavy selling of 24.70 billion, the JSE data shows. So far this year, non-residents have been net sellers of $5.9 billion, a billion more compared to the same period in 2024. "Foreign investors, if anything, behave like tourists. They will come for a trade, especially in gold stocks when the commodity runs, but they won't stay without long-term policy certainty," said Tucker. Higher offshore volumes mostly reflect global uncertainties, as the country's growth fundamentals have not improved significantly, Nedbank economist Isaac Matshego said. Data from the country's statistics agency showed last week that the country's gross domestic product stagnated in the first quarter, mainly owing to six straight months of contractions in the mining and manufacturing sectors. ($1 = 17.9439 rand)
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From Gaza to South Sudan, private firms deliver aid and face questions
JUBA, June 13 (Reuters) - Fifty-kilo sacks of food hurtled out the open hatch of the cargo plane, scattering in the wind on their 1,000-foot descent to the northeastern flatlands of South Sudan. For the past three weeks, an American company run by former U.S. soldiers and officials has airdropped hundreds of tonnes of maize flour, beans and salt into one of the world's most desperate pockets of hunger. The campaign, which South Sudan's government says it is funding, has brought lifesaving aid to areas ravaged since February by fighting between the military and local militiamen. It also offers a window into a debate about the future of humanitarian aid in the wake of U.S. President Donald Trump's dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and cuts to aid budgets around the world. The South Sudan contract is one of a growing list of business opportunities for Fogbow, an outfit of about a dozen people that first distributed food last year in Gaza and Sudan. Fogbow president Mick Mulroy said the company - which is owned by a former U.S. diplomat, a Marine Corps veteran and an American businessman - now has five project requests in conflict zones in Africa and the Middle East. Mulroy attributed the rising demand to donors looking to support humanitarian projects but increasingly hard-pressed to find implementing partners due to aid cuts. "There's a substantial and growing need from people around the world at a time when we decided collectively to reduce the support," said Mulroy, who was a deputy assistant secretary of defence during Trump's first term. For some aid sector veterans, the demand for Fogbow's services points to a worrying shift toward a more politicised aid model that they say sacrifices humanitarian principles like neutrality and, by extension, its credibility with beneficiaries. In Gaza, a U.S.-backed outfit that Israel has authorised to distribute food in the Palestinian enclave, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), has bypassed the U.N.-led aid system and been accused by some critics of weaponising aid in service of Israel's war aims. Asked for comment, GHF said it had found a "better model" to ensure food was delivered in Gaza. "Bottom line, our aid is getting in and feeding people while aid from other groups is getting looted and not being delivered," it said in an email. Fogbow says it has no connection to GHF. But its operation in South Sudan is raising some of the same questions because it is working directly on behalf of a party to an active conflict. The campaign has been complicated by its association with the government: the aid comes in sacks marked "South Sudan Humanitarian Relief" and emblazoned with the national flag. Some people have refused the food because they don't trust the government, whose forces are bombarding parts of Upper Nile, according to two residents, opposition politicians and a U.N. source. "They expect people to take the food but we say 'no' to our people," said Manpiny Pal, a senior local government official in Ulang County, one of two in Upper Nile targeted by the airdrops. "We need the food of the U.N. How do we know if that food dropped has something in it?" said Pal, who is from the opposition SPLM-IO party. The United Nations' World Food Programme (WFP), which plans to distribute over 160,000 tonnes of food in South Sudan this year, said last month that no humanitarian aid was getting to the two counties by the usual river route due to the fighting. Asked if WFP had considered airdropping food there, a spokesperson said airdrops were a last resort because they cost up to 17 times more than deliveries by road or river. Some veteran humanitarians have deep misgivings about Fogbow's model. Martin Griffiths, who served as the top humanitarian official at the United Nations from 2021 to 2024, urged against trying to reinvent the wheel. "The humanitarian community is large and amorphous. It is also careful. And finally it is experienced. This is a well to draw on and I wish this was done by Fogbow," Griffiths told Reuters. Michael VanRooyen, the director of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, which researches humanitarian issues, said Fogbow and GHF were undermining an evidence and needs-based approach to aid. "These organisations are not humanitarian. They are agents of a government, intended to fulfill political and in some cases military purposes," he said. Fogbow officials say they are a logistics provider rather than a humanitarian organisation but try to align their projects with humanitarian principles. Chris Hyslop, Fogbow's humanitarian lead and a veteran of the U.N. system, said he had near-daily contacts with WFP to discuss drop locations and ask for input. He acknowledged complications from working directly with the government but said such concerns had to be weighed against the benefits of national authorities taking responsibility for their own people. The WFP spokesperson said that while the agency receives a daily update from Fogbow on drop locations to deconflict airspace, it has no involvement in the operation. South Sudan's government said it asked Fogbow, rather than WFP, to do the drops in order to expedite the rollout and show it was taking responsibility for its citizens. "Here is a government taking up responsibility as a core mandate of that government," said Chol Ajongo, the minister of presidential affairs. The government declined to say how much it was spending to distribute the 600 tonnes of food. Fifty-seven percent of South Sudan's more than 13 million people suffer acute food insecurity, according to the U.N., but the country has only received pledges covering 20% of its $1.69 billion in estimated humanitarian needs for 2025. Fogbow's leaders express respect for the U.N. and traditional non-governmental organisations and say they would be happy to work as contractors within the existing system. But they also think they can do better. Fogbow CEO and co-owner Brook Jerue said the company's previous work had shown the advantages of its military background and willingness to innovate. In Gaza, Fogbow advocated for sending food on barges across the Mediterranean from Cyprus to avoid bottlenecks at land crossings. Many humanitarians opposed the idea, arguing it would ease political pressure on Israel to open land routes. "The humanitarian community was super upset with us because they were all pushing for land crossings, and we were just like, 'hey, we're gonna try something different'," said Jerue, a former U.S. Marine Corps pilot. Fogbow dropped its barges plan when then-U.S. President Joe Biden decided in March 2024 to deliver aid through a U.S. military-built floating pier. Fogbow went on to deliver 1,100 tonnes of flour through the U.S. pier and an Israeli port with funding from Qatar, Jerue said. Later last year, it used profits from the Gaza operation to finance airdrops into Sudan's remote South Kordofan state before USAID offered to provide funding, Jerue said. The State Department declined to comment on that operation. A spokesperson said the U.S. was not involved in the aidrops in South Sudan but voiced support for "burden-sharing among capable nations". Fogbow's model is facing its sternest test in Upper Nile's Ulang and Nasir Counties, which the U.N. on Thursday said are at risk of famine in the coming months after fighting this year forced more than 100,000 people to flee their homes. Each morning and afternoon, a cargo plane carrying 16 tonnes of food leaves the capital Juba for one of two drop sites. The food is collected by workers from an independent local NGO and then distributed. While the aid has reached around 30,000 people, the government-led campaign has faced resistance rooted in accusations of abuses by the military, including allegations made by local residents - and supported by Human Rights Watch - that government planes have dropped incendiary weapons. The government denies this and says it does everything possible to minimise harm to civilians. The SPLM-IO has accused the military of coercing displaced civilians to return home to collect the food. Local residents have also questioned the decision to drop food into Nasir, a military garrison town largely deserted by civilians after heavy fighting in March, as opposed to areas with high concentrations of displaced people. The government denied any coercion but acknowledged the drops into Nasir were intended to encourage people to return and show it could provide for them. "For you to claim the legitimacy and the representation of the people of South Sudan, you must have presence in all those places," said Ajongo.
