Denis Demin, Deputy Managing Director of Lenmontazhstroy IC

– Africa has substantially strengthened its positions in the hierarchy of foreign political and foreign economic interests of the leading international players

In the last years Africa has substantially strengthened its positions in the hierarchy of the foreign political and foreign economic interests of the leading international players – the United States, Europe, China. Following the world’s biggest economies, the most developed African states can shortly start to actively develop nuclear energy. There are two factors that can stimulate Africa’s interest in nuclear energy: availability of own fuel resources and low access to certain types of energy, particularly, water energy. At the same time, the financial capacities of the continent strongly depend on the prices of raw materials. The present situation on that market can curb Africa’s develop in the near future. Actively moving towards nuclear energy since the late 1990s, South African Republic has now decided to make a pause because of the global economic crisis.

The itinerary of the presidential tour of Africa runs via the countries that were the key economic and political partners of the Soviet Union in that region: Egypt, Nigeria, Namibia, Angola. This is the first such tour in Russia’s history and it is a kind of attempt to verify our relations with “our Africa.” The participation of a delegation of Rosatom in the tour is quite natural: the Corporation is also quite active abroad. In 2007 a delegation of Rosatom and the Ministry of Natural resources visited South African Republic and Namibia (both are rich in uranium). However, Rosatom regards African not only as a source of nuclear fuel but also as a potential market for Russian nuclear technologies and services. In 2010 Egypt is planning to announce a tender for the construction of a nuclear power plant. Considering the level of our technical-economic cooperation with Egypt, we have all chances to win the tender.

Egypt in interested in nuclear energy because it has own uranium resources. Nigeria is also rich in uranium and is also ready to build a nuclear power plant. However, it will commission its first reactor no earlier than 2017. Nigeria is very rich in oil and may not hurry to develop other sources of energy. So, for the time being, Russia regards Nigeria exclusively as a uranium supplier. The same is for Namibia, a country having 1/10 of the world’s uranium. For many years Namibian uranium has been mined by the world’s biggest mining companies and the fact that in 2008 ARMZ was also allowed to prospect and mine uranium in that country proves that our companies are quite competitive on the world market.