Australian miners pride themselves as being some of the first “on ground” in every African minerals rush. Whether it’s the Chinese-driven copper rush of the 2000s in Zambia or the latest smartphone-driven cobalt rush to hit the Congo, chances are, if there was money to be made, Australians were there, ready to dig.

The same is true today, and as some in the industry told Inq, there are very few places that are considered off limits.

But across Africa, wrote David Landes in The Wealth Poverty of Nations, “the clocks go backward as well as forward”. That might be useful advice for the vast cavalcade of miners digging deep to exploit the lucrative resources that lie beneath the continent’s more dangerous regions, where despotic regimes, desperate for deals, are prepared to put profits before their own people.

Eritrea: the perils of mining in the ‘North Korea of Africa’

Slavery, rape, murder, torture.