Madagascar is one of the world’s largest islands and home to 25-million people as well as other unique species, which makes it one of the most biodiverse places on the globe. Beautiful it may be, regarding electrification Madagascar is far behind its peers and one of the least electrified nations on the continent with a rate of just 15%. Lemur Holdings, a subsidiary of SA born and London-listed Bushveld Minerals, is looking to change that and its plans to provide coal-fired power to the southwest of the country by 2021 are steaming ahead. Bushveld Minerals took over Lemur Holdings in 2015, and with it, a 136-million ton coal asset in Madagascar. “Bushveld acquired Lemur and the coal asset initially to export coal, but when we did our business case we realised it made more sense to generate our own demand by putting a ‘mine mouth’ power station there [where] you pretty much just feed the coal from the mine to plant on a conveyor belt,” says Lemur CEO Prince Nyati. The power station, ...

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