Once again, SA is watching the world’s mining boom from the sidelines

South Africa sits atop extraordinary mineral wealth — over 80% of global PGM reserves, 70% of the world's manganese, and a critical logistics gateway for African lithium. Yet as the energy transition supercharges demand for exactly these minerals, SA is squandering its inheritance. A hostile regulatory environment, insecure mineral rights, and crumblinginfrastructure have pushed investors toward Australia, Chile, and Morocco instead. IRR researcher Anlu Keeve delivers a damning assessment: youth unemployment above 60%, processing facilities being built elsewhere, and bilateral supply agreements signed without us. The bar is open. SA just came to watch..By Anlu Keeve*.Three men walk into a bar. One orders a lithium sours, the next a manganese old fashioned, and the third a platinum martini. The bartender looks them over and asks: “Where are you gentlemen from?”.“The Democratic Republic of Congo,” says the first. “Indonesia,” says the second. “Australia,” says the third.Just then, a fourth man walks in and joins the others at the bar. The bartender asks where he’s from. “South Africa,” he replies.The bartender nods slowly. “Ah. And what will you have?”“Nothing,” says the South African. “I just came to watch.”It is tempting to read the joke as a comment on the decline of South Africa’s mining industry. That decline is real, and others, including Dr Anthea Jeffery, Head of Policy Research at the Institute of Race Relations (IRR), have written about it extensively.If it is bad form to explain a joke, far worse is South Africa’s spectating role in it. Mining matters more in this technological age than it has at any point since the Industrial Revolution, and South Africa (like that man at the bar who just came to watch) is failing to turn this mining moment into investment, jobs, and growth.Take the electric vehicle (EV) at its charging station in Munich, BMW’s home turf, the solar panels that burnish Seoul’s high-rise skyline, or the wind turbine revolving on its pod high above the waves of the North Sea. These examples of contemporary energy technology may seem far removed from the dust and clamour of any mine shaft. But they give physical form to S&P Global Vice Chairman Daniel Yergin’s description of the energy transition as a move “from a world of big oil to a world of big shovels.”[1]Put simply, the global energy transition is, at its foundation, a mineral story because the EV, the solar panel and the wind turbine depend on cobalt, copper, lithium, and platinum-group metals (PGMs).That is the first reason mining matters more. The technologies meant to reduce the world’s reliance on fossil fuels are far more mineral-intensive. A typical EV requires six times the mineral inputs of a conventional car (keep in mind, one quarter of all the new cars sold in 2025 were electric[2]) while an onshore wind plant requires nine times more mineral resources than a gas-fired power plant. The same point is borne out over time: every new megawatt of power generation capacity added today requires, on average, about 50% more minerals than it did in 2010.[3]This is reinforced by the global surge in electricity consumption. The added demand is driven by new AI developments (one ChatGPT prompt can reportedly use almost ten times more energy than a single Google search), and related infrastructure. Data centres are appearing in mushroom-like industrial flushes.That is why the demand for minerals is steepening. By 2040, lithium demand is projected to rise to almost five times its 2024 level. Over the same period, graphite demand will more than double, while demand for nickel, rare earths, cobalt, and copper is projected to grow 2.2 times, 1.7 times, 1.6 times, 1.5 times, and 1.3 times respectively..The second reason mining matters more now than ever is the geopolitical race to secure these minerals: a race that is well under way.Industrial supply chains are being reorganised on a scale not seen since the Industrial Revolution. This view is shared by analysts at Janus Henderson Investors, JP Morgan, and the IEA, among others.The attitude shift among wealthy economies toward securing mineral supply over the past three years has been remarkable in its speed and scale. UNCTAD has identified 73 international critical mineral agreements signed since 2022 alone. The US has committed $7 billion in federal funding to secure supply chains and signed bilateral frameworks with more than ten countries. The EU has declared critical mineral supply a strategic sovereignty issue. China has weaponised its processing dominance by restricting rare earth exports in response to US tariff measures: disruptions that have rippled through supply chains in Japan and Europe as well.Author and geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan’s thesis provides the analytical frame for all of this. His argument is that the American-underwritten liberal order, which made long-haul global shipping possible and affordable, and allowed supply chains to stretch across continents without geopolitical risk, is fracturing. As it fractures, supply chains shorten. Countries scramble for physical proximity to the inputs they need. Geography begins to matter again in ways it has not mattered since before containerisation.In Yergin’s world, the shovels are not just bigger. They are also in higher demand, more geopolitically contested, and more strategically valuable. The question now is: whose ground will they break?Breaking South African groundThis is where South Africa comes in. It is sitting on a disproportionate share of what the men with big shovels are looking for. Here is a quick breakdown:PGMs: South Africa holds the world’s largest reserves of PGMs: more than 80% of all known reserves on earth.[4]Manganese: South Africa’s Kalahari Manganese Field in the Northern Cape contains the largest known terrestrial manganese ore deposit on earth, accounting for an estimated 70% of all land-based manganese reserves globally.Chrome: The world’s chromium endowment is concentrated in very few places: roughly 95% of reserves are found in Southern Africa and Kazakhstan. South Africa holds one of the largest individual positions with almost 30% of global reserves. It is also the world’s largest chrome producer.Lithium: South Africa itself has very few lithium reserves, but controls much of the logistic and export gateway for the region’s lithium. Hard-rock lithium mined in neighbouring Zimbabwe – which holds the largest lithium reserves in Africa – and Namibia must flow through South Africa’s rail networks and ports to reach global markets.Against the backdrop of our geological endowment, South Africa holds a mineral position that should attract capital, projects, and long-term industrial interest. The evidence suggests that South Africa is failing to do this on two fronts:The Fraser Institute’s Annual Survey of Mining Companies which includes a Policy Perception Index (which assesses the attractiveness of mining policy across surveyed jurisdictions from the perspective of exploration managers) ranked South Africa amongst the ten least attractive jurisdictions surveyed.(At the risk of repeating myself), South Africa holds the world’s largest manganese reserves, while only about 2% of the manganese ore produced in South Africa is locally processed. South Africa is losing twice over: it is failing to draw enough capital into new mining projects, and the minerals that are mined are too often exported before higher-value processing work happens domestically.The Department of Trade, Industry and Competition, in its newly released industrial development strategy, has a plan for this. “A review of mining legislation on the allocation of mineral rights is critical to enable the government to attach conditions that must facilitate beneficiation. This shift is crucial because it will allow beneficiation objectives to be embedded in mining licensing decisions”. In simple terms: if you want a mining right, first prove you will process the minerals here.This confuses South Africa’s competitive advantage in mining with its aspirations for industrialisation. It mistakenly assumes miners can also be manufacturers. In the words of Minerals Council CEO, Mzila Mthenjane: “Mining and beneficiation are separate and distinct economic sectors in the mineral value chain. Beneficiation cannot, and must not, be imposed on mining.”South Africa’s problem is therefore not a simple failure to mandate beneficiation. It is an inability to create conditions in which sophisticated and high-value exploration and processing investment want to locate here.To understand why global investors consistently choose other jurisdictions, understand what investors in long-horizon mining projects actually require. They require three things above all: secure tenure over mineral rights, a predictable and navigable regulatory environment, and reliable physical infrastructure to move the product to market. The failure on South Africa’s part to provide these three requirements has killed the goose. To understand how the South African government killed the goose, read this article by Dr Anthea Jeffery.The opportunity costIt is tempting to frame this as a story about investors, or about the mining sector itself. But the people who will pay the highest price for this missed window are neither shareholders nor CEOs.South Africa’s youth unemployment rate stood at 60.9% for those aged 15 to 24 in the first quarter of 2026, according to Statistics South Africa’s Quarterly Labour Force Survey. More than four in ten young people aged 15 to 34 – approximately 4.7 million individuals – were unemployed. The NEET rate (young people not in employment, education, or training) for those aged 15 to 24 reached 37.6% in the same quarter, and has been rising year on year.These statistics represent a generation of South Africans for whom the formal economy has no place. These are young people living above one of the most valuable mineral endowments on earth, in a country that is ceding its moment in the global economy..Read more:.Critical minerals, critical moment: South Africa is losing the race to supply the world.The global battery manufacturing and energy technology industry is projected to generate millions of jobs over the coming decade. South Africa is failing to attract investment that would transform that advantage into economic activity – and economic activity into jobs.This is the opportunity cost that should animate the conversation about South Africa’s mining sector. The cost that should command the most urgent attention is the one that has not yet been incurred but is being locked in, every year that policy reform is delayed. The jobs will never exist, the processing facilities will be built in Morocco or Namibia instead of the Northern Cape, the bilateral supply agreements will be signed with Australia and Chile instead of South Africa.South Africa did not earn the Bushveld Igneous Complex or the Kalahari Manganese Field. These are accidents of the earth’s history, inherited gifts of extraordinary magnitude. What countries do with such gifts is a matter of policy, and policy is a matter of choice.The energy transition is making South Africa’s geological inheritance increasingly valuable. The world needs what we have.The bar is open. The world is ordering. It is time South Africa stopped watching..*Anlu Keeve is a researcher at the Institute of Race Relations. She has a degree in Economics and International Trade, and an Honours in Economics from the University of Cape Town..This article was first published by Daily Friend and is republished with permission..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox every morning on weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa's bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here.

Once again, SA is watching the world’s mining boom from the sidelines

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