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Noah Greenhill, business development manager, JSE & AltX
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A dichotomy of attitudes
Noah Greenhill
Posted: Mon, 14 Apr 2008

[miningmx.com] --HAVING the privilege of traveling to conferences around the world gives me the opportunity of interacting with and watching people. Recently we hosted around 4,000 delegates in Cape Town at the annual Mining Indaba.

This is a “must-attend” conference if you have anything to do with mining in Africa or for that matter anywhere in the world. Unless you book early you may battle to find appropriate accommodation and you may have to be patient waiting in the “premier client” queue when collecting your hired car.

All said, the Mining Indaba attracts the decision makers in the mining fraternity and a number of deals and associations are forged at this event.

At the Mining Indaba this year, held at the Cape Town International Conference Centre, the escalator was not working. Whilst the conversations regarding mining and exploration were on the whole positive, the rumbling and groaning by people having to walk down the escalator was interesting.

It seemed that this was symptomatic of South Africa and Africa - we could not even have the escalators working when we are hosting such a prestigious event like the Mining Indaba, it seems that the South African government does not care and it is in fact their fault that this escalator is not working.

Miners do not seem to mind the fact that they have to mine in obscure jurisdictions with little infrastructure but heaven forbid you may have to walk up or down an escalator.

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Juxtapose the above story with my experience at the Prospectors and Developers Association Conference (PDAC) in Toronto, Canada. PDAC is a conference focusing on exploration and junior mining. It attracts 22,000 people to the conference, mostly Canadians looking for investment opportunities in this sector. Again all of the above applies in terms of the accommodation.

Canada has a taxi culture so the hiring of cars is not necessary there. The PDAC is held at the Metro Convention Centre, and this year because of the size of the conference growing so rapidly – might just be symptomatic of the industry – they moved the conference from the south side to the north side of the conference centre.

Now just imagine this - the escalator was not working!

Not once did I hear anyone moaning or groaning about the Canadian government being responsible, in fact not once did I hear anyone saying anything about the escalator, the fact that you had to queue to walk up the escalator or anything else. Everyone just got on with it!

In my view, if we focused on the big things and did not worry about the little inconsequential stuff we may be able to make South Africa the mining mecca of Africa. It was amazing for me to see the dichotomy of attitudes.