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How South Africa can play crucial role in African mining?
Despite the current state of mining and mining services sectors in South Africa, the country remains at the heart of renewed global interest.
According to Statistics South Africa, mining production in South Africa declined by 7.7% year on year in April 2025, with the decline for March being adjusted to 2.5%.
Utilising its legacy
But South Africa has all the elements for success, not only because of South Africa's rich mineral resources but also the proximity to the dynamic growth unfolding across the African continent.
Should South Africa be able to seize this opportunity, the country can use its legacy to play an important role in the next mining boom, not watch it pass by.
Mining remains a significant sector for South Africa. In 2024, it contributed 6% of the total gross domestic product (GDP). Mining directly employs over 450,000 people, and in 2024 generated export earnings of over R800bn.
South Africa still holds a significant portion of global platinum and gold reserves and remains a key supplier of manganese and vanadium, both critical components for battery production. But this is only part of a much bigger picture.
To service this industry, South Africa is also home to some of the world's best and most experienced mining services companies.
From technical, logistical, operational, and support sectors, the country is packed with expertise that other mining economies need.
Across Africa, the mining market size was valued at over $500bn in 2024 and is projected to nearly double within the next decade.
The continent holds over 30% of the world's known mineral reserves, including 40% of global gold, 90% of platinum-group metals, and vast quantities of copper, cobalt, lithium, and rare earths.
The DRC alone exported almost $20bn in copper and cobalt in 2023.
Zambia is rapidly positioning itself as a global copper powerhouse, with major investments and infrastructure projects driving a push to triple annual production to three million tonnes by 2031, creating significant opportunities for mining services and supply chain partners.
Meanwhile, new frontiers like Angola, Tanzania, Guinea, and Namibia are unlocking deposits at pace and attracting global capital along with them.
SA's response
This comes with a significant caveat: most of the equipment, services, engineering skills, and financing for these projects still come from outside the continent. That's an opportunity begging for South Africa's response.
South Africa's depth of expertise – ranging from mine design and planning, drilling and blasting, casting, smelting and mineral processing, equipment maintenance, and environmental management – is ideally placed to serve these growing markets.
But South Africa must expand its thinking beyond national borders. South Africa should not just be a mining country; it should be Africa's mining services powerhouse.
This is especially urgent given the recalibration of global trade.
As geopolitical tensions cast a shadow over once-stable markets — from North and South America to Asia — multinationals are rethinking their supply chains and looking for trusted footholds.
This is also a significant opportunity for South Africa.
As mining activity across the continent accelerates and global trade recalibrates, South African companies—many of which have decades of experience operating in diverse African environments—are uniquely positioned to take the lead.
By scaling their footprint across the continent and aligning with regional development goals, these companies can unlock new markets, drive export growth, and position South Africa as the hub of Africa's next mining boom.
Policy meeting ambition
But to fully take advantage of this opportunity, government policy must match the economy's ambition.
Governments can play a catalytic role by creating an enabling environment for goods and services exports, ranging from a commitment to functioning logistics and port networks to using diplomatic muscle to open doors in high-growth regions.
Failing that, we risk ceding the field to competitors who see what we refuse to grasp.
As the rest of Africa's mining industry is growing, so is its mining services and export infrastructure.
Other African nations are investing in their port terminals, for example, leaving South Africa's ports to decline in efficiency and expediency.
South Africa must ensure it is a stable, reliable trading partner.
South Africa must urgently modernise its trade and logistics infrastructure, streamline cross-border processes, and position itself as the continent's mining services hub.
This means not only fixing our ports and rail, but also actively supporting local firms to expand across the region through financing, trade diplomacy, and smart industrial policy.
The African Continental Free Trade Area presents a generational opportunity to reshape how and where value is created in African mining, but only countries that move quickly and decisively will benefit.
South Africa has the capabilities; now it needs the coordination and political will to act.
Africa's mining future is vast, complex, and still up for grabs.
South Africa can lead it — not only with excavators and explosives, but with ideas, services, and strategic reach. For a country searching for growth, that's a prospect worth mining.
