CVMR Bets Big on Bangui with a 25-Year Mining Pact Aiming to Loosen Russia’s Grip on the Central African Republic
Bangui has long been a geopolitical chessboard where diamonds and gold financed insurgencies while Russian mercenaries traded guns for mineral rights. Now, in a single, quietly-negotiated memorandum of understanding, President Faustin-Archange Touadéra is inviting a different outsider to redraw the map: privately held Canadian metals specialist CVMR Corporation. On June 17 the Central African Republic (CAR) granted CVMR exclusive, 25-year rights to find and develop any uranium, coltan, copper, gold or nickel it can identify across the entire country—an audacious concession brokered after CVMR’s founder Kamran M. Khozan met Touadéra and two senior ministers in Bangui last week.