South Africa is aiming to boost mineral exploration activity in its largely underexplored Northern Cape province, the country's mineral resources and energy minister Gwede Mantashe said this week.
"We have enabled this through the development of the exploration strategy coupled by the exploration fund which is currently being established by the department [through the Council for Geoscience] in partnership with the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC)," said Mantashe at the Mining and Energy Investment Conference held at Kimberley in the Northern Cape on 29 June.
South Africa in 2022 developed and released an exploration strategy for its mining industry, which has identified minerals such as lithium, cobalt, manganese, copper as critical to its shift to a green economy. South Africa is aiming by 2025 to attract $900mn of exploration expenditure, roughly 5pc of the estimated global exploration expenditure of $18bn in 2025.
The said exploration fund of around 500mn South African rand ($26.43mn) will help emerging mining firms to participate in mineral exploration projects.
"This initiative will ensure that we de-risk the mineral acreage of the country and encourage the emergence of new mines," said Mantashe. "Priority will also be given to critical minerals projects as these will support our green economy trajectory and support our just energy transition."
"A new theatre of global economic struggle is emerging around critical minerals," he added. "This has been witnessed through several agreements between countries endowed with these minerals and industrialised countries looking to secure future supplies. We are monitoring this trend to ensure that whatever is contemplated will support the industrial aspirations of our country."
Minerals and energy are symbiotic
With energy security on the line, South Africa will also be continuing its exploitation of hydrocarbon resources, in line with the common front that African energy ministers presented at last year's Cop 27 UN climate summit in Egypt.
African stakeholders accused the west of hypocrisy during the summit and are determined to chart its own just energy transition, while drawing on domestic oil and gas resources to drive its economic development.
"The wealthy nations need to decarbonise and African nations need to industrialise," Africa Energy Chamber chairman NJ Ayuk said in late 2022. "That's the deal."
At least three exploration wells offshore the Northern Cape province will be drilled in 2024 to "prove the petroleum resource potential" in the Orange Basin, according to Mantashe on 29 June. "The Northern Cape province is a good example and demonstration of the undeniable mineral and energy complex. A demonstration that the exploitation of mineral resources always has and will be dependent on energy for years to come," he said.
South Africa in May approved a seismic survey off the west coast between St Helena Bay and Hondeklip Bay in the Western Cape, which sits within the Orange basin.
