Gold and Iron Ore to take centre stage at upcoming African mining conferences

Mining Capital's Alastair Ford looks ahead to the Indaba and Mining 121 conferences in Cape Town.

''A lot of the talk will be around the gold price which has moved through $1300 in recent days ... there'll be some interest too in Iron Ore as that price has gone up significantly following the dam collapse in Brazil''.

''On the whole the atmosphere at these events will be somewhat muted ... there's a certain amount of confidence in certain areas of the industry but overall I think there's still a great deal of caution''.