In line with the theme of this year’s Investing in African Mining Indaba – ‘Future-Proofing African Mining, Today’ – the impetus of focusing on defining sustainability in a changing world remains key to strategic developments in the African mining and minerals industry, highlights Wits University African Research Centre for Ore Systems Science director Professor Glen Nwaila.

He explains that mining companies in Africa should establish medium- to long-term goals that prioritise economic sustainability through operational modernisation, such as the judicious use of technology, awareness and planning around international and local developments, and involvement in education and policy.

Nwaila will participate as a panelist at the Indaba in the discussion ‘The Role of Data Standardisation in Attracting Investment’, on February 3, outlining the role that data standardisation and AI play in attracting investment to the mining sector.

He aims to highlight how fundamental scientific enquiry can lead to reliable technological development and how this is impacting investment decisions in Africa.

“I will discuss the critical importance of agile mining and a minerals industry workforce which should be equipped with the skills needed to implement these advancements. These focal points align with the urgent need for mining operations to be forward-looking and scientifically rigorous to meet modern objectives.”

Future of African Mining

Nwaila asserts that the future of African mining is predicated on sufficient energy and material capacity required to realise the economic potential of the sector.

He highlights that the continent needs to improve its energy production significantly “through all means necessary” and that there would be less mining activity without sufficient energy input required for all industrial processes.

“We have so much trouble supplying enough energy to our communities that this is the immediate bottleneck to scalability and [it] drives up our extraction costs.”

Noting the rapid evolution of material needs globally, Nwaila says this is a clear signal of what is important for mining, which is to focus on commodities that are enduring and will always be needed, especially in Africa.

Materials such as lithium, nickel, some platinum-group elements and rare-earth elements, have collapsed in pricing. The lesson here, Nwaila says, is that the “shelf life” for any material that is potentially designated to be important seems to be “unusably” short for the industry to capitalise on.

This is one of the main reasons why the market fluctuates so wildly with US elections, especially with the most recent one on November 5, 2024.

Aside from geopolitics, Nwaila adds that other “modern needs”, such as AI, will also have their own requirements, such as significant energy demand, which requires base metals – most likely uranium and thorium, as well as niche materials, such as germanium and silicon – for semiconductors.