Claude Baissac, CEO, Eunomix. TOPIC: The impacts of 15 years of mineral policy on the performance of South Africa’s mining industry and how to manage country/political risk and drive positive mineral development strategy.

Claude Baissac heads Eunomix, and is a recognised specialist in strategy, risk management and economic policy. He has more than 20 years of executive and consulting work with corporates, governments and international organisations. He is a consumed multi-disciplinary with a wide combination of skills and experiences serving investment, operation and growth in emergent societies.

Claude has worked as an economist for the African Development Bank, the World Bank and the United Nations. He has served as deputy managing director of Air Afrique and consulted with leading advisory firms such as Deloitte, Kroll, K2 Intelligence and a number of economic development firms. He has secured, led and managed several hundred projects, in addition to launching and running businesses.

He has a distinct understanding of the strategic and operational realities of investing and managing businesses in emergent societies, and running and reforming these societies. He has a rare capacity to work effectively with senior government officials in both political and administrative functions, C-suite executives and boards, and members of civil society. For this reason, he is increasingly sought after as a corporate coach on corporate resilience, risk management and stakeholder engagement.

As a trained policy analyst and political scientist, he brings in-depth understanding of politics and the policy process. As an economist, he has a robust comprehension of the mechanism of growth and development. He is a recognised expert on special economic zones and was President of the World Economic Zones Association between 2011 and 2014. He has a strong track record on the relationship between natural resources and sustainable growth, given the central role these play in many emergent societies. For several years he was involved in corporate integrity management, conducting investigations, crisis management and corporate security projects throughout Africa.

These complementary skills have led him to apply a solid political economy perspective on the respective roles of the state, business and society toward sustainable growth. They also provide him with skills that are key to effectiveness – scenario analysis, strategic planning, policy and regulatory design, economic modelling and impact assessment, financial forecasting, and market research.

He has worked across Africa, the Americas, Central Asia, Europe and the Middle East. Claude is fluent in English and French, in the French creoles of the Indian Ocean and is conversant in Spanish.

He is regularly consulted by leading international media on politics, policy, extractive industries, special economic zones and related topics. He has spoken at numerous conferences, including the Free Zone Convention, Joburg Indaba, the Intergovernmental Forum on Mining, Mine Africa and the Mining Indaba.

Claude has advanced degrees in economic geography from France, and was a doctoral scholar in political science in the United States. His skill set includes: political and country risk; policy and public affairs; strategy; enterprise risk management; strategic communications and stakeholder engagement; economic and infrastructure development; corporate sustainability; project structuring; project and bankable feasibility development.

Roger Dixon, mining industry leader, Pr.Eng. BSc (Hons) Mining, FSAIMM. TOPIC: Mechanisation in Gold and Platinum Mining in South Africa.

Roger Dixon has spent more than 47 years in the South African mining sector and today specialises in reserve and resource reporting to stock exchanges. With his principal qualification in mining engineering, his career has included over 30 years in senior management roles at both operations and head offices of large gold mining companies.

As a consulting engineer from 2002 mainly with SRK Consulting South Africa, he has worked extensively in mine valuation, due diligence studies and engineering studies. He also played a leading role in developing reporting standards through the South African Mineral Resource Committee (SAMREC) and the global Committee for Mineral Reserves International Reporting Standards (CRIRSCO), two committees on which he still serves. 

He has represented CRIRSCO since 2007 on the Expert Group on Resource Classification (EGRC) and its Technical Advisory Group (TAG), which is a sub-committee of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) Sustainable Energy Division that meets annually in Geneva. He has presented widely on the relationship between the United Nations Framework Classification (UNFC) and the CRIRSCO International Reporting Template.

Roger was the main intermediary between CRIRSCO and mineral industry professionals in Kazakhstan who developed the structures and the reporting code that met CRIRSCO requirements and resulted in Kazakhstan becoming the 10^th member of CRIRSCO in June 2016. The joining of CRIRSCO was part of the 100 steps plan to modernise the Kazakhstan economy; a joint initiative between the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Ministry of Investment and Development of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

Now semi-retired, he acts as an independent mining consultant.