The Mining Indaba - Cape Town 2025

The annual Mining Indaba was recently held in Cape Town from the 3rd to the 6th of February 2025, officially opened by the Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy, Mr. Gwede Mantashe, and was well attended by members of the SIS group management team.

The Mining Indaba brings together a wide spectrum of players from the mining and minerals industries. These range from exploration companies, junior and major mining houses, original equipment manufacturers, technology solution providers, international trading houses, and providers of various offerings such as finance and inspection services.

This year’s Indaba was held against the backdrop of the continued efforts by the world's leading nations to transform their economies from fossil-fuel based energy sources to greener alternatives. These discussions focused on the mining and processing of critical minerals that are required to achieve the imperative of reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases. The levels of new investment required to mine and produce battery metals like lithium, copper, cobalt, graphite and manganese was one of the key points of discussion.

 
It is expected that the demand for critical minerals will be driven largely by the demand for electric vehicle (EV) batteries. The conversion from vehicles powered by combustion engines to those that are powered by electric batteries is being led by the major EV companies in Europe, America and China. Tesla, one of the leading American EV companies, has big EV battery manufacturing facilities in China. China is also a leading manufacturer of EVs itself and consequently has the lion’s share of demand for critical minerals. Mines in Africa though have to constantly study the market for shifts in demand for their minerals. The effect, for example, of one of the new policies from the Trump administration of providing incentives to American companies for “bringing back” primary production to America will be interesting to observe.

Discussions were also held looking at the challenges that mines in Africa are facing in implementing audit systems and regulations designed to link them to credible supply chains under the OECD guidelines.

The opening speech by the Minister also brought in to focus the difficult policy choices that the African governments and mining houses will have to make, in the face of the geo-political realities of the emerging China-led BRICS+ alliance and Increasing protectionist policies from the United States of America amid increasing global minerals demand.