African mining exploration fell by 3.4% in 2023 to $1.27 billion (R24bn), S&P Market Intelligence revealed at the Mining Indaba in Cape Town. That meant that as a share of global exploration Africa continued to only attract 10% for the third year running after peaking at some $3.3bn in 2012 with a 17% share.
With an abundance of resources critical to the global energy transition effort, Africa continued to attract attention from the mining sector in 2023, despite a weakening global economic outlook.
In S&P’s view, Africa is quickly emerging as one of the prime targets for the development of new mines to meet the demand for commodities such as copper, lithium and others.
Gold attracted the largest allocation of the exploration budget by commodity, even though the $677.9 million allocated was a 13.1% drop from 2022.
Buoyed by the strong prices at the start of 2023, lithium exploration allocations jumped by 32.4% for the year, while the outlook for future copper supply deficits helped support a 23.6% increase in exploration allocations for the continent.
African primary copper mines continued to have a relatively low weighted-average all-in sustaining cost, coming in at $1.88 per pound in 2023, or 3.6% below the global average. Worldwide, many operations faced higher costs in 2023 as supply chain challenges, energy costs and other inflationary pressures surged.
BUSINESS REPORT