Orano has opened quiet talks with Botswana’s leadership in a bid to replace Niger’s lost output, executives familiar with the overtures told industry media. The French nuclear firm, locked out of its 63 percent stake in Niger’s SOMAIR mine after last year’s coup, dispatched mining chief Xavier Saint Martin Tillet and strategy vice-president Pierre Fourrier to a 15 April encounter with President Duma Boko on the margins of a MEDEF forum in Paris.
Gaborone has long promoted an 800 000-tonne uranium endowment to offset waning diamond revenue, yet no yellowcake has been produced since exploration began in 2009. Officials now point to the Letlhakane prospect among world-class undeveloped caches and have courted investors at Vienna-based IAEA meetings since 2021. Orano has already secured exploration titles spanning roughly 15 000 km² in western Botswana’s Ghanzi district, according to regulatory filings reviewed by Africa Intelligence.
The lobbying effort follows the junta’s 2024 decree seizing SOMAIR, which supplied fuel for about a fifth of France’s reactors. Niamey accused the state-backed operator of “irresponsible, illegal, and unfair behaviour” since the 26 July 2023 takeover, vowing to market ore directly after a convoy of concentrate left the Arlit complex without Orano oversight. The company warned the move created safety hazards; authorities replied they were exercising “legitimate” commercial rights.
Paris is simultaneously courting Astana for greater shipments — Kazakhstan already commands 40 percent of world uranium—and tapping Washington’s new enrichment purse. At March’s Nuclear Energy Summit Macron urged expanded Kazakh sales, while Orano Federal Services collected USD 900 million of a USD 2. 7 billion U.
S. Programme aimed at feeding a future Tennessee plant.
Source: Africa.businessinsider
Original author: Olamilekan Okebiorun
