By Christina Mkutumula

Lilongwe, August 30, Mana: Ministry of Mining says the country will soon have state of the art laboratory where all analysis of mines will be done.

Director of Administration in the ministry Andrew Chisamba told Journalists on Thursday, that the opening of the laboratory is waiting for few final touches to be done which is expected to take a month or so.

“The laboratory is almost functional now and the equipment is being mounted, a few things are remaining like to construct vents in the laboratory for equipment that requires vents, and soon we will roll out,” he said.

He said the laboratory is beneficial to the country as it will now be analyzing its samples within and not sending them elsewhere.

“This laboratory is of benefit to Malawians because in the past we used to send samples outside for analysis but now we will be able to do that ourselves.

“This will cut on forex for the services that we used to pay and also will cut on the time that it took for us to get analysis results. This will have an impact on the process of Mining in the country,” he said.

Chisamba further explained that the state-of-the-art laboratory is the first of its kind in this part of Africa as neighbouring Zambia and Tanzania also send to other countries to have their mines analysed.

“This means that we have not created something for ourselves as a country, but also for our neighbours who will be sending their mines to be analysed in Malawi,” he said.

Responding if the country has enough minerals, Chisamba said Malawi has more minerals especially critical minerals which are used for clean energy production saying as the world is moving towards clean energy, there are critical minerals which are currently in high demand and Malawi has to utilize that.