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In several low-and middle-income countries rich in non-fuel mineral resources, mining makes significant contributions to national economic development as measured by the revised Mining Contribution Index (MCI-Wr). Ten countries among the 20 countries where mining contributes most (highest MCI-Wr score) have moved up one or two steps in the World Bank's country classification between 1996 and 2016. In particular, African countries have benefitted. Socioeconomic development indicators also show signs of progress for African mineral-rich countries. This paper provides an update and expansion of an earlier study within the framework of the United Nations University (UNU) World Institute for Development Economics Research (WIDER) initiative Extractives for Development. Based on the detailed data available for the sector, such as production, export, prices, mineral rents, exploration expenditure and government revenues, an analysis is carried out of the current situation for 2016, and trends in mining's contribution to economic development for the years 1996-2016. The contribution of minerals and mining to GDP and exports reached a maximum at the peak of the mining boom in 2011. Naturally, the figures for mining's contribution had declined for most countries by 2016, but importantly the levels were still considerably higher than in 1996. The results of this survey contradict the widespread view that mineral resources create a dependency that might not be conducive to economic and social development. In addition, this paper presents an attempt to use already available socioeconomic indicators for African mineral-rich countries to measure socioeconomic developments. One preliminary conclusion of this survey is that mining countries perform better than oil-producing countries and non-mineral countries in Africa as measured by these indices of human development and governance.

This paper adds new knowledge on how raw materials should be managed in iron and steelmaking firms. While previous research has contributed significantly to how firms should deal with functional challenges related to raw materials, the understanding of Raw Materials Management from a holistic perspective is largely lacking, and extant research does not provide qualified advice to firms on this matter. This study provides such knowledge by drawing on insights from Höganäs AB, a world leader in ferrous powder metallurgy, and their efforts to identify key aspects and principles of raw materials management. Our elaboration of a more holistic view on raw materials management builds on two elements. First, we depict five external uncertainties and three internal conditions that impact firm-level raw materials management. Second, we present six critical capabilities that underpin proficient firm-level raw materials management. The paper concludes with a discussion of implications for both firms aiming to increase their raw materials proficiency and to future investigations into this important area.

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The concept of declining availability due to declining primary resource quality has been investigated for various resource categories to try to determine the effort needed in future to either extract the resource or to treat it for intended use. The concept of 'future efforts' due to declining primary resource quality is explored by Vieira et al. (2016. They suggest that a specific burden associated with the production of each primary material should be taken into account and that this can be done by studying the costs of production or ore requirements of the material and by projecting forward likely costs into the future. For the purpose of the analysis, they employ mine cost data for 2000-2013 and reserve data published by the US Geological Survey. We will argue below that this approach is not correct and, with this comment, we wish to make it clear that-contrary to what is suggested in much of the Life Cycle Assessment literature-the future efforts concept is not an established rule of natural resource extraction. For mineral resources, it is quite impossible to proceed with extraction in the ordered way that this approach suggests because nobody has a comprehensive view of the entire natural resource. Secondly, there is no evidence available to support the idea that extracting a mineral resource today causes a decrease in availability of that mineral tomorrow. On the contrary, the weight of evidence suggests that where declines in ore grades have been observed, they are overwhelmingly due to technology development in response to high demand and have been accompanied by increased mining efficiency and increased availability of the resource to successive generations. Grade is a rather arbitrary measure since the grade of mined ore ultimately has to do with the relationship of costs and revenues. It is not only the technology employed which matters but also how smartly this technology is applied. Thirdly, the future efforts approach entirely overlooks the potential availability of mineral materials from secondary (scrap) sources, sources which are expected to become increasingly important to mineral supply in the future. Our conclusion from the discussion is that we as humans have been able to economically access ever-increasing amounts of material from often lower and lower-grade sources. What is impossible to conclude from this is that the environment no longer contains any of the higher-grade sources. In fact, all the available evidence suggests that higher-grade deposits are still out there. We remain critical optimists.