Category: Business

Recently, it was reported that a North African country Egypt, is the largest producer of dates globally with the export of over 1 million tons annually. This puts Egypt ahead of Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Pakistan. The volume produced by Egypt also doubles the total production of Sudan and South Sudan which are also Africa’s other two producers. This news comes after Egypt was finally allowed to export dates to China in January this year.

What  really are dates

A date is an oval shape, one-seeded sweet fruit which belongs to the family of Palm plant. The unripe fruits are bright yellow or red in colour while the ripe fruits are brown and shrivelled, resembling a prune. They are categorized into three groups which are sugar content- soft, semi-dry and dried dates. The fruit is believed to have originated from the present day Iraq with evidence of its cultivation dating back to 7000 BC thereby making it one of the oldest cultivated fruit. According to World Atlas, date palms require arid and semi-arid conditions in places with long, hot summers and little to no rainfall for growth. The larger sizes of the fruits are in high demand on the international market.

What are the benefits of this fruit

The benefit of date fruits are numerous but the most common is its treatment of sexual weaknesses. The consumption of date fruits has been linked to enhancing sexual performance and increasing libido in both male and female. Its richness in iron helps prevent anaemia. Dates are a good source of vitamins which boost the health and functionality of the human nervous system. Dates help to reduce the risk and impact of abdominal cancer. Red dates are loaded with vitamin C and flavonoids, which can improve the elasticity of the skin and enrich the subcutaneous tissues.

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How did Egypt become the largest exporter of Dates

Since Egypt produces 18 percent of the world’s dates, the country decided to take advantage of the dates sector which is one of the most promising sectors that can contribute to the advancement of its economy through boosting of export and job creation. The country has initiated several projects which would help it achieve this goal.

In 2015, the country hosted its first-ever Dates festival in Siwa Egypt,  in cooperation with the Ministry of Commerce and Industry in collaboration with the Khalifa International Prize for Date Palm and Agricultural Innovation. This festival aims to shed light on the dates sector in Egypt and unify the efforts of all governmental institutions, research organizations, and international organizations to promote the sector and find practical solutions to the problems that the producers and manufacturers of dates are facing, according to fresh produce exporter, Fruitlink.

Egypt partnership with the Food and Agriculture Organization and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) has an ongoing technical cooperation project for the development of the dates value chain for the advancement in the industry.

Food and Agriculture Organization

In 2017, Egypt’s Trade Industry prepared a strategy to develop the dates industry, in order to boost the export of the fruit from 38,000 tons to 120,000 tons during the next five years, increase the price per ton to $1,500 from $1,000. The strategy also targets to increase Egypt’s financial gains from the industry to $180 million at the end of the strategy by 2021.

By December 2018, the country’s Minister of Agriculture and Land Reclamation, Ezzedine Abusteit revealed that North African country Egypt has 15 million palm trees, but aims to cultivate an additional 2.5 million palm trees using modern agricultural methods.

Currently,  dates from Egypt have been exported to 42 countries, with Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Morocco, and Thailand topping the list.

What is Nigeria doing about this

While Egypt is taking advantage of this growing sector, Nigeria still lags behind despite being the only country in the world where date palms have two harvesting seasons in a year whereas North Africa and the Middle East have only one fruiting season. Despite having this advantage, the country produces less than 20 percent of what is being consumed in the country with the remaining  80 percent being imported.

Apart from double harvesting, high yield of fruiting is also recorded in Kano, Jigawa, Kaduna, Katsina, Sokoto,  Kebbi, Zamfara, Gombe, Borno, Yobe, Bauchi, Adamawa and some parts of Taraba states in the country.

Natural Resources

The United States Department of Defense has held talks with Malawi’s Mkango Resources Ltd and pentagon eyes rare earth miners across the globe about their supplies of strategic minerals, part of a plan to find diversified reserves outside of China, a department official said on Wednesday. 

The push comes as China threatens to curb exports to the United States of rare earths, a group of 17 minerals used in a plethora of military equipment and high-tech consumer electronics. 

Although China contains only a third of the world’s rare earth reserves, it accounts for 80% of U.S. imports of minerals because it controls nearly all of the facilities to process the material, according to U.S. Geological Survey data. 

“We are looking for any source of supply outside China. We want diversity. We don’t want a single-source producer,” Jason Nie, a material engineer with the Pentagon’s Defense Logistics Agency, said on the sidelines of the Argus U.S. Specialty Metals conference in Chicago. 

The DLA, which buys, stores and ships much of the Pentagon’s supplies – ranging from minerals to airplane parts to zippers for uniforms – has also held talks with Burundi’s Rainbow Rare Earths Ltd about future supply, as well as offered to introduce the several U.S. rare earth projects under development with potential financiers, Nie said. 

“We can make connections,” he said.

The DLA routinely talks with potential suppliers as part of its due diligence, steps that do not necessarily result in purchase agreements. Still, the inquiries show that the Pentagon is increasingly focused on diversifying supplies of critical minerals. 

As of September 2016, the most recent operational report, the DLA held stocks of many critical minerals worth $1.15 billion. 

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For the current 2019 fiscal year, the DLA expects to buy rare earths on the open market (up to a maximum 416 tonnes), lithium ion battery precursors (0.02 tonnes) and tin (40 tonnes), among other strategic minerals, according to a government report. 

Some of the equipment the Pentagon buys, including night-vision goggles and aircraft, are made using rare earth minerals. The Pentagon has long supported efforts to require military contractors to buy domestically sourced minerals, though there are no current U.S. rare-earth processing facilities. 

China, as part of the escalating trade conflict with the United States, implied through its state-controlled media last month that it could restrict rare earth sales to the world’s largest economy. Such a step would have precedence, as China in 2010 culled exports of rare earths to Japan after a diplomatic dispute. 

“If you put yourself in China’s shoes, this is their main weapon in the trade war,” said Mark Seddon, an Argus metals analyst. 

Mkango Resources is developing a rare earths mine and processing facility in Malawi that is still several years from coming online. Rainbow Rare Earths began operating in Burundi in 2017 and has an offtake agreement with ThyssenKrupp AG.FILE PHOTO: Rare earth oxides praseodymium and neodymium are pictured in the final stage of production at Lynas’ Advanced Materials Plant in Gebeng, Malaysia July 3, 2014. REUTERS/Sonali Paul

China dominates global processing capacity for rare earths, with Australia’s Lynas Corp the only non-Chinese company with any significant capacity. 

“It is not a good idea to be reliant on a single major source of any material,” Amanda Lacaze, chief executive of Lynas, told Reuters on the sideline of the conference. Lynas last month signed a memorandum of understanding to build a rare-earth processing facility in Texas with privately held Blue Line Corp. 

Texas Mineral Resources Corp is pushing to develop the Round Top rare earth deposit in a remote corner of the state’s western edge, and Rare Element Resources Ltd is moving forward on a Wyoming project. 

But those projects will take several years to come online, reflecting the reality that efforts to build rare earth processing plants in the United States are still in the early stages.

Privately held MP Materials, which owns the Mountain Pass mine in California, aims to open a processing facility by next year. 

The U.S. Commerce Department on Tuesday recommended urgent steps to boost domestic rare earth production. 

The report includes 61 specific recommendations – including low-interest loans and a buy American provision for defense companies – to increase U.S. rare earths supply. It also called for closer cooperation with U.S. allies, which dovetails with DLA’s outreach to miners in Africa and elsewhere.

Reporting by Ernest Scheyder and Zandi Shabalala; Editing by Leslie Adler