At its annual general meeting last week, African Energy executive chairman Alasdair Cooke said Botswana was an ideal location to invest in a mining project due to its transparent mining act and attractive fiscal regime.

He said Botswana also had low commercial risk and low sovereign risk unlike Australia, which had a rising sovereign risk.

Botswana projects and underdeveloped coal projects in Queensland require billions of dollars in infrastructure development, he said.

“We’re competing with other new developing provinces such as the Galilee basin, not with other Botswana deposits,” Cooke said.

Along with the Galilee Basin, African Energy said it was also competing with the Surat Basin where junior company’s such as Stanmore Coal and MetroCoal are developing.

African Energy’s Sese coal project, which has the potential for domestic and overseas options, will commence stage one production in 2013, producing 1-2 million tonnes per annum of thermal coal.

African Energy said the project could ramp up to 20Mtpa of coal production in stage three, where the coal could cater for China and India’s insatiable energy demand.

The Sese project which African Energy discovered mid 2010 has over a 2.5 billion tonne coal resource.

The project, which is located 50 kilometres to the south of the mining hub of Francistown, will have access to nearby existing rail and road infrastructure connecting through to neighbouring Zimbabwe and South Africa.

The company said core drilling on the tenement was now complete, and an indicated resource would be released towards the end of quarter four 2011.

A bankable feasibility is also underway, which is forecast for the completion by the end of 2012.