This post is long, but you asked for my "futher elaborations", and it would take even more time and skill to cover the topic in fewer words. Also, my views on Africans are suspect, because what I have experienced is a minuscule sample in the scheme of things, and much of it is not recent. Further, what I write is limited to Africa south of a line running from Senegal to Kenya, and for convenience I refer to the people there as Africans, although it is an inaccurate tag.
People north of that Senegal-Kenya line tend to be racially, culturally and historically different from those in the south, and those in the north are significantly different from each other (a Nilotic Anamist in South Sudan would have little in common with a blond Sunni Muslim Berber in the Atlas Mountains). Sharia Law applies in many jurisdictions in the northern geography. LYL tends not to do business there, so it's an issue that needs no focus here. That said, I know that LYL, via its South African subsidiary, ADP Holdings, did work for Kasbah Resources (ASX KAS) at a tin project, in Morocco.
Risk arising from impoverished informal settlements
In Africa, poor migrant populations are drawn to the vicinity of operational mines, and they establish informal settlements that are controlled by criminals, rather than the traditional polity of the area. This has caused well publicised problems in South Africa and elsewhere recently. However, the problem is rare for new mining initiatives where LYL does most of its business in Africa, because migrants have not had time to upset the traditional polity of such places. LYL can do its job, and employ locals it can use, and then exit the scene quickly.
Bribery, both crass and disguised
In many places (not just Africa), populist leaders are inclined to nationalise profitable mines, or horn in on the action in other ways – e.g., taking bribes in various guises, sometimes crass, sometime subtle. This would normally not impact LYL, because it does not operate mines.
LYL's subsidiary based in Cape Town, ADP Group, is exposed to bribery in disguise, as its 49% partnership in Kholo Marine & Minerals (Pty) Ltd, a 51% “Black owned empowerment Company”, might manifest. Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) is Government Policy in South Africa that has been a bonanza for Black elites with good political connections. Similar JVs with Indigenous businesses are common in Australia, so it's “business as usual”, I suppose. The word “Black” now has a cachet of respectability in South Africa that it did not have before, but at ground level, that may not be the case.
Physical and diseas risk to Australian personnel
There are certain places in Africa that are not healthy, and their medical resources can be below standard, so visiting parts of Africa carry a risk, but LYL proably has very few Australians working in Africa.
ADP Group has about half a dozen offices in Southern Africa, which includes Namibia and Botswana. In South Africa, ADP can hire skilled mining engineers who, although substantially Whites, have mine-engineering experience in Africa. LYL also has an office in Ghana, a country with sufficient educated people who are familiar with the people in neighbouring countries. Consequently, LYL can handle projects in Africa substantially using non-Australian staff on sites.
As an aside the 2018 Annual Report lists the following companies abroad:
Lycopodium Burkina Faso SARL .. Burkina Faso .. !00% *
Lycopodium Minerals Canada Ltd .. Canada .. 100%
Lycopodium Mauritius .. Mauritius .. 100% *
Lycopodium Philippines Pty Ltd Australia 100%
Metco Global Limited Angola .. 74% *
Orway Mineral Consultants (Canada) Ltd 100%
ADP Holdings (Pty) Limited South Africa .. 74 74%
* These supply offshore project support services, not engineering services.
Non-payment risk
LYL tends to do business with ASX-listed mining companies, often Perth based, and it does so on its own terms, which may include payment in Australia, an apt up-front deposit, and subject to Australian law. ADP in South African was a significant company in its own right, and its customers are prestigious firms like De Beers and Anglo American, so its financial risk is low too.
Risk in summary
Management know how to do business in Africa at low risk.
Personal experience
On a personal level, I never had any problems when I lived in South Africa, or visited neighbouring countries, or visited South Africa a few times recently.
Africans in my experience respect those who show them respect. They do not expect an outsider to be pally, and pally language and behaviour is best avoided, because it can either diminish respect for the outsider, or be deemed insulting, both in ways that an Australian may not understand. I upset an African man in Malawi by using the word “Blacks”. He put his arm next to mine to highlight that he and those with him were not black, they were brown. I was misguided by the fact that in the USA the word “Black” was then replacing “Negro” in PC language. Behaviour and language that may work in America, may not work in Africa.
Respect
Respectful greeting makes a huge difference in Africa, and not greeting people is regarded as disrespecting them. When Nelson Mandela was gaoled, a white warden wh spoke isiXhosa greeted him respectfully (maybe he used the greeting “Sawubona”, followed by a respectful word that appropriate to refer to Mandela), and Mandela never forgot that. Years later when Mandela was inaugerated as President of South Africa, he invited the warden to attend the inaugeration ceremony as his personal guest.
Mandela mentioned in his memoirs, that he remembered that the State Prosecutor, Percy Yutar, always used polite modes of address when prosecuting him and his co-accused. In spite of being polite, Yutar afforded the accused no sympathy, but President Mandela later invited Yutar to a cordial lunch, and he brushed of the prosecution as Yatar “merely doing his job”. Yutar's lack of perceptible sympathy was perhaps more contrived than real, because he cleverly pursued a case that did not allow the judge to pass a death sentence, which Mandela, a trained lawyer, admits he thought would happen.
My perception of many Africans is that they have an uncanny facility to see people as they really are, and not as they pretend to be. I met a man in Malawi who had spent time on a scholarship in Canada, where he was looked after by a White family, and treated very well. He was impressed that the the family had no Negro friends, and so he interpreted their friendship as genuine and peculiar to himself as an individual, and not based on let-us-be-nice-to-lesser-mortals sentiment, which he would have regarded as insulting.
LYL Price at posting:
$5.35 Sentiment: None Disclosure: Not Held
(20min delay)