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Africa is becoming a major supplier of the minerals inside electric-car batteries, wind turbines and phones. A U.S. Geological Survey fact sheet, written from company plans as they stood in 2023, lists every graphite, lithium and rare-earth mine opened in Africa since 2017 or planned to open by 2026. The plans are the companies', not USGS predictions, and only projects with a start date are included.
Countries with graphite, lithium and rare-earth mines opened or planned, 2017–2026. USGS.
Graphite: from 1 percent to 14
Graphite comes in three forms. Amorphous goes into brake linings, pencils and furnace linings; vein graphite into high-friction and high-heat uses; flake into refractories, expandable graphite and batteries. Flake is graded by size: jumbo and large flakes, scarce and expensive, make flame retardants; medium, small and fine flakes go into batteries.
| Year | Africa's share of world graphite mining |
|---|---|
| 2016 | about 1% (15,000 tonnes) |
| 2018 | nearly 14%, as Madagascar and Mozambique ramped up |
| 2021 | 13% |
- Mozambique: Balama, the largest mine on the list at 356,000 tonnes a year of concentrate, opened in late 2017, shut for COVID-19 in March 2020 and restarted a year later.
- Madagascar: exports rose from 13,300 tonnes in 2017 to 53,400 in 2019 as the Gallois expansion (to 150,000 tonnes a year) and new mines at Sahamamy, Vatomina and Molo came in; Maniry could add 39,000 more.
- Tanzania: five projects — Bunyu, Chilalo, Lindi Jumbo, Mahenge and Nachu — could together reach nearly 530,000 tonnes a year by 2026.
- Namibia, Uganda, Guinea: Aukam and Okanjande could restart Namibian mining; Orom-Cross (Uganda) and Lola (Guinea) are planned.
Flake sizes vary widely: battery-grade flake is only 15 percent of Sahamamy's output but 79.5 percent of Balama's.
Lithium: a small base, big plans
Batteries took about 80 percent of the world's lithium in 2022; the rest went into ceramics and glass, greases, steel-casting powders, air treatment and medicine. Africa mined about 2,100 tonnes in 2018 — roughly 2 percent of world output — mostly from petalite, and under 1 percent by 2021.
| Country | Project | Planned start | Capacity (tonnes lithium a year) | Status, 2023 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zimbabwe | Bikita | 1953 | 1,600 | producing petalite |
| Mali | Goulamina | 2023 | 23,200 | under construction |
| Ghana | Ewoyaa | 2025 | 7,100 | feasibility study |
| Namibia | Karibib | 2024 | 1,300 | seeking finance |
Most of the new supply is planned as spodumene, the most common lithium ore.
Rare earths: from beach sands to hard rock
Rare earths go into catalysts, glass, ceramics, polishing and pigments, and above all into magnets — in cars, hard drives, motors, speakers and, increasingly, wind turbines. The world mined about 190,000 tonnes of rare-earth oxide in 2018; Africa's share was 1 percent, 2 percent by 2021.
| Kind | Projects |
|---|---|
| By-product of mineral sands, producing since 2018 | Mandena, Madagascar (Rio Tinto, about 5,000 t a year); Moma, Mozambique (Kenmare, about 2,800 t) |
| Hard rock, seeking finance | Longonjo, Angola (21,000 t); Ngualla, Tanzania (16,200 t); Songwe Hill, Malawi (6,000 t); Makuutu, Uganda (1,300 t) |
| At the feasibility stage | Steenkampskraal, South Africa (3,000 t); Phalaborwa, South Africa — rare earths from old phosphate tailings (1,700 t, 2026) |
If they are built, the hard-rock mines would produce most of Africa's rare earths.
Sources
Written from Developments in African industrial minerals for renewable energy, U.S. Geological Survey Fact Sheet 2024–3029, a work of the United States government in the public domain, compiled from USGS minerals yearbooks and company reports.
Licenza: CC0 1.0 (pubblico dominio) · Tratto da pubs.usgs.gov
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