Hi crabpest, its good to see your perspective. Your post is much...

Hi crabpest, its good to see your perspective. Your post is much more informative than some of the others that get posted to this forum.

There is no doubt IO is there. My issues are the following:
- the mining leases have not been granted. Someone had pointed out on this forum a number of months ago that the approvals would be coming any day (my words, not theirs but they had implied they were imminent). Some of the tenements have been under renewal for years. AKO is not in a unique position, and there are other companies awaiting approvals. In evaluating the risk I always come back to this; if these tenements were located in Australia, how would the market assess the risk. And in my mind the market would discount these significantly. Tbh, no explorer would actually undertake exploration without approval.
- A revised mining code is yet to be finalized. For this reason there is a lot of uncertainty about mining in Madagascar. All you need to do is look through the history of a number of Australian mining companies who have been exploring in Madagascar to get a feel for the uncertainty.
- Southern madagascar is experiencing a severe drought which is having a devastating effect on the country. It has been considered a humanitarian crisis by many observers.
- Its approach to a COVID vaccine has been concerning. While many senior cabinet ministers left the country to get its vaccines overseas, it was pushing locally a herbal alternative.
- You need to consider why Madagascar offers a better economic return than say investing in Guinea. I just cant see, with iron ore at record prices, how Madagascar offers a better alternative than other jurisdictions. Saying Madagascar has a port is much different than saying we have established port capacity. Same goes with roads and other infrastructure. Saying you can just build roads is a lot easier said then done.

If you have time i would recommend you use google earth and really zoom in on the tenement area in which AKO are exploring. In some areas its tough terrain. It very quickly becomes apparent at how difficult building infrastructure will be.