The Directorate of Geological Survey and Mines is upgrading the national mineral testing laboratory at Entebbe, adding assay capacity for gold, tin, tungsten and rare earth clays. For anybody holding a licence in Uganda this is not a small matter, because without an assay you cannot price your ore properly.
01Why testing is the bottleneck
Right now many operators send samples out of the country, to South Africa or to Kenya, and they wait. That waiting is money. It also gives buyers the upper hand, because the seller does not know exactly what he is holding while the buyer often does.
02What it means for small operators
You see, if the lab turns samples around in days, cooperatives can negotiate from a position of knowing. If the fees are set high, or the queue is long, then the same people will keep selling blind and the upgrade will help only the big ones.
03Our reading
The equipment is the easy part. Staffing, calibration and honest pricing are the hard part, and that is where we shall be checking in six months. Even so, this is one of the more useful things the ministry has done this year. That is the part we shall be checking next time.
How we verified this: licence and production details are checked against official records and ministry statements where they exist. Corrections are welcome at corrections@ugandamineraltrust.com.