By: Charles Mazhindu - Partner at PKF Octagon

As Mining Indaba 2026 approaches, the mining sector is at a strategic inflexion point. The next mining boom will not be defined by record-breaking ounces or tonnes alone. It will be determined by how effectively mining companies convert data, governance and capital discipline into long-term value.

Commodity cycles are becoming shorter, and capital is more cautious. Investors are no longer incentivising scale for its own sake but are seeking substance. Meanwhile, disclosure standards are tightening, stakeholder oversight is increasing, and regulators are requiring greater transparency across environmental, social, and financial areas. In this climate, compliance might help a company stay in the race — but it won't differentiate it. The true 'differentiators' will be those firms that move beyond mere compliance and disclosure. They are the firms leveraging real-time data analytics to provide a granular, audit-ready view of their operations.

The untapped potential for companies that get it right is high. According to the World Economic Forum, the Southern Africa region – comprising Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe – holds a significant percentage of the world’s critical minerals reserves. Given its mineral endowment, the region has the potential to play an even more substantial role in the supply chain of critical minerals.

The International Energy Agency’s Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2025 says demand for lithium is set to grow five-fold by 2040. Cobalt demand will double, and copper demand will rise by 30% in the same period.

While this potential is enormous, Southern Africa’s vast mineral wealth remains underutilised.

McKinsey’s MineSpans analysis highlights the scale of untapped potential: there is more than $9 billion in critical mineral projects in the pipeline, yet fewer than 10% of these projects have secured financing and progressed to the construction or feasibility stages. Of the over 60 identified projects spanning copper, graphite, lithium, and manganese, fewer than a quarter are considered “certain” or “probable”, reflecting investor caution and regulatory uncertainty.

What will differentiate tomorrow’s mining leaders and companies’ ability to grasp opportunities and harness untapped potential is financial foresight.

From compliance to conviction

For decades, financial reporting in mining has been treated primarily as a compliance exercise — backwards-looking, periodic and siloed. That mindset is no longer fit for purpose. Today’s mining executives must navigate volatile pricing, complex joint ventures, evolving royalty and tax regimes, rising ESG-linked costs, and increasingly sophisticated funding structures. These pressures demand real-time insight, scenario modelling and integrated decision-making.

The most resilient mining businesses are already shifting from reactive reporting to proactive financial intelligence. They are asking more complex questions: How robust is our balance sheet under prolonged price pressure? Where are operational inefficiencies hiding in our cost structures? How exposed are we to regulatory or social licence risks across jurisdictions? And critically, how do these risks intersect?

Data as a strategic asset

Mining has always been asset-heavy. Increasingly, it is also data-rich, yet the efficacy of data is often underestimated and underutilised. Production metrics, cost curves, ESG indicators, tax positions, and capital allocation decisions are frequently stored in separate systems, each owned by a different function. The result is fragmented visibility and delayed responses to emerging risks.

Forward-looking mining strategies treat data as a strategic asset. When financial, operational and ESG data are integrated, leadership teams gain a clearer line of sight into performance drivers and value leakages. Scenario planning becomes sharper. Capital allocation becomes more disciplined. And strategic trade-offs — between growth, sustainability and returns — become informed rather than intuitive.

This is where integrated accounting and advisory insight becomes the new differentiator.

Governance that enables growth

Strong governance is an enabler of sustainable expansion. Investors and lenders are increasingly rewarding mining companies that demonstrate disciplined capital management, transparent reporting and credible risk oversight. Poor governance, by contrast, now carries a direct cost of capital.

Effective governance today goes beyond board charters and committee structures. It requires robust financial controls, defensible valuations, clear accountability across complex value chains, and alignment between strategy, incentives and outcomes. It also requires advisers who understand mining-specific risks — from reserve estimation and impairment testing to cross-border tax structuring and ESG assurance.

Advisory as a strategic partner

In this context, the role of the accounting and advisory partner is evolving rapidly. Today’s mining companies need partners who can sit at the intersection of finance, strategy and risk — translating complexity into clarity and foresight into action.

They need to find and harness advisory and support services grounded in deep-rooted expertise across the mining value chain. Advisors must work alongside mining houses, developers and service providers to strengthen financial resilience and unlock sustainable value. From capital structuring and transaction support to cost optimisation, risk management and ESG-aligned reporting, the approach needs to be deliberately integrated — because mining risks rarely exist in isolation.

By combining technical accounting rigour with strategic advisory insight, mining leaders can move from hindsight to foresight — enabling better decisions before risks crystallise and opportunities are missed.

Measuring the next boom

As Mining Indaba 2026 convenes industry leaders around the promise of sustainable growth and shared prosperity, the sector would do well to broaden its definition of success. The next boom will not belong to those who extract the most or the fastest. It will belong to those who govern best, allocate capital most intelligently, and use insight to navigate uncertainty.

In a world where trust, transparency, and returns are increasingly intertwined, lasting value will be measured not only in what is mined from the ground but also in the quality of the decisions made above it.