MINING IN AFRICA SPECIAL — African Minerals eyes Zambian

Privately owned African Minerals is planning to go public with mineral projects acquired or optioned in emerging countries of Africa. Zambia and South Africa were chosen as bases of operations because of their mineral potential.

A junior in the Robert Friedland stable of companies, African Minerals already owns Lebowa Diamondfields, which, in turn, controls the diamond prospecting rights to all of the Lebowa Republic (2 million hectares in the Northern Transvaal).

In Zambia, the junior has operating emerald mines and three large exploration properties prospective for copper, gold and diamonds.

The Mufumbwe exploration licence in northwestern Zambia comprises 400,000 acres and includes the Mufumbwe deposit (7.2 million tonnes of 2.2% copper), and the Kalengwa deposit which was mined until 1977 (1.6 million tonnes extracted at 6.45% copper with additional unmined reserves). There are also seven other prospects known on the licence.

African Minerals, which has an interim agreement to acquire 95% of this licence, plans to expand the size of the known deposits through exploration and to investigate the potential for gold occurring within the copper deposits.

African Minerals was also granted a prospecting licence for the Mwombeshi River area covering about 400,000 hectares in northwestern Zambia. The property is adjacent to licences owned by Anglo American and Phelps Dodge (NYSE).

Phelps Dodge is developing the Lumwana open-pit deposit, which contains more than 1 billion tonnes at 0.7% copper. African Minerals believes similar mineralization exists on its licence, and exploration for copper, cobalt, gold and diamonds is planned.

The junior has applied for a 120,000-hectare prospecting licence covering the Musondweti-Dongwe area, also in the northwest. Diamonds have been recovered from a stream sediment-sampling program conducted by De Beers in the 1970s, although nothing turned up in the subsequent exploration program. African Minerals believes this licence has potential for “Carlin-type” gold deposits. Six other mining companies — including Gencor, Western Mining, Phelps Dodge and Anglo-American — have also applied for this area. African Minerals has also started discussions with state-owned Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines (ZCCM) concerning copper oxide resources on the copper belt. The junior proposes using solvent extraction-electrowinning to recover copper from oxide deposits controlled by ZCCM.