Southern Africa underpins critical minerals transition

Southern Africa has a prudent role to play in the supply of critical minerals needed for the transition to a greener economy. How to locate and extract these minerals and other materials whilst minimising the environmental impact will be on the agenda at this year’s Southern African Geophysical Association’s 18th Biennial Conference & Exhibition (SAGA 2024) taking place from 1 to 4 October 2024, in Windhoek, Namibia.

Conference Chairperson, Reece van Buren, noted that Southern Africa possesses significant endowment of minerals which are and will likely continue to be critical to various industries minimising and even reversing conventional negative environmental impacts. “Countries across the Southern African region must intensify exploration for and exploitation of critical minerals as the world moves towards a lower carbon economy. To effectively counter the decline in coal supply and utilization, there is a demand to significantly increase exploration efforts for these ‘energy minerals’ essential for emerging green technologies. Increasingly economically marginal exploitation of the significant platinum group elements endowment within the region, crucial to various hydrogen technologies, is strongly dependent upon the innovation and industrial uptake of these.”

Under its net-zero emission by 2050 scenario, the International Energy Agency calculates that mineral demand for electric vehicles and battery storage will rise by well over 50‐times by 2050, while the expansion of electricity networks will lead to a doubling of demand for copper for power lines over the same period.

Lithium will see the fastest growth among the key minerals, with demand up over 100‐times its current level through to 2050, while cobalt, nickel and graphite also see rapid demand growth. Copper demand registers the largest absolute growth, rising by around 14-million tonnes by 2050, expanding the size of the global copper market by 60% in the period.

SAGA 2024’s theme, Collaborative Geoscience for Critical Supply, is acutely relevant since Africa accounts for more than half of the world’s production of cobalt, platinum and manganese.

The Centre for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) think tank estimates that the continent holds 85% of manganese reserves, 80% of platinum and chromium reserves, 47% of cobalt reserves and 21% of graphite reserves. They also estimate that Africa will account for 26% of the world’s production of hard rock lithium by 2030.

Challenges such as infrastructure development, low investment, and socio-economic conditions will need to be addressed to fully realise this potential.

In 2022, South Africa’s Department of Mineral Resources and Energy published the Exploration Implementation Plan for South Africa’s mining industry. Little progress has been made in the last three years, with red tape, regulatory uncertainty and a lack of access to financing cited as the biggest obstacles delaying progress. South Africa’s share of global exploration activity stood at 5% in 2003 but has now declined to below 1%.

SAGA 2024 will therefore look at how geoscientists and engineers can move into a new era of mining that includes exploration and development of deep and complex ore bodies leveraging new developments in measurement technologies as well as real-time information management systems.

Keynote speaker Jeremy Barrett, General Manager of Southernrock Geophysics SA, brings a wealth of experience in this field. He will present key findings from his career in the Andean belt of South America, exploring for copper at ever increasing depths of cover and in ever more adverse settings. He will showcase successes and the pathway towards sustainably providing the world with its ever-increasing demand for raw materials.

Addressing the technology aspect, keynote speaker Dennis Woods, President of Woods Geophysical Consulting Inc, said that the search for economically and environmentally extractible critical mineral deposits will require new and innovative geophysical technology, to search deeper in the earth with improved resolution and discrimination ability. Key among the advanced technologies for this task, particularly for nickel, cobalt and copper, is electromagnetics and especially transient electromagnetics (TEM), which he will discuss at SAGA 2024.

Adding to these insights, Dr Per Gisseloe, Senior Project Manager at SkyTEM Surveys ApS, will provide first impressions on a fully airborne drone TEM system, providing high sensitivity for mapping the near-surface resistivity structure.

Delegates will also have an exciting opportunity to witness the implementation of new technologies in real field conditions. This includes cutting-edge developments like Airborne Gravity Gradiometry (AGG) and Full Tensor Magnetic Gradiometry (FTMG), with insights provided by speakers Des Fitzgerald, Gaud Pouliquen, Colm Murphy and Joel Jansen.

Can Buren highlighted that interdisciplinary collaboration was an essential element in maximising opportunities within this critical minerals space. “There has never been a more pressing time to work together to and propel the industry forward, especially by integrating specialist knowledge from a variety of disciplines as it is at the intersection where innovation is and will continue to occur.”