Mineral deposits — where they are, and how precisely that is known

Every position is Derived, not surveyed. Most were placed from the operator and locality distance phrases in the source material. The precision column gives the envelope the position was placed with, and whether that figure was stated for that deposit or is the platform’s screening default of ±30 km, which is not a measurement. It is not a guarantee: some positions are known to fall outside it, and are listed below. Where no permit coordinates were found in the sources reviewed, the row says the point is a placeholder and what it stands in for. Use these positions to see which province or region a deposit sits in. Do not use them for drill planning, licence boundaries or anything that needs a surveyed location.

Spatial-reference records carry a name, commodity, status, province and position, with the position’s precision, and nothing more. Research-grade records rest, in the platform’s own record, on a named operator and a named primary source — a national survey body, a government department or the operator group — but no resource statement under a recognised reporting code (NI 43-101, JORC, S-K 1300). The open feeds carry the same fields for both. A research-grade record moves up, first to dossier-grade, when a tonnage and grade statement under a recognised reporting code is published; every tier is defined on the methodology page.

Status is shown as the source recorded it. Op: operating. Dev: development. Exp: exploration. C&M: care and maintenance. Hist: historical. The stage in brackets is the platform’s normalised field: producing, development, exploration, or unclassified where no stage has been assigned.

Most rows carry no review date: they are screening data that has not been checked one by one, and should be treated as unchecked until they carry one. Problems found on 12 October 2026, and what was done on 18 October 2026: the positions given for Kolomela, Black Mountain Zn (SA) and Pering Zn (SA) were about 76, 98 and 222 km out, and are corrected: Kolomela to a coordinate filed on SAHRIS; Black Mountain and Pering to the position of the named town (Aggeneys, Reivilo), on the location statements each row now cites, with wider envelopes for that reason. Pering Zn (SA) was also shown as operating, and now records its 2002 closure. Songwe REE and Mkango REE (Malawi) matched no single project: their names point at Songwe Hill, about 620-640 km to the south, and their positions lie nearer Tanzania’s Songwe Region; both are retired, and Songwe Hill, Ngualla and Kangankunde keep their own records. The row named Mbamba Bay is withdrawn: Mbamba Bay is a town on the Tanzanian shore of Lake Nyasa, the row placed a copper-lead-zinc deposit in the Republic of Congo, and no deposit of that name was found. The deposited copy on Zenodo (v1.1) still carries these six rows as first published; the corrections are listed on /cite/. Still open: the province label or status on several rows appears to be wrong, among them the rows in southern Africa labelled Cape Fold Belt (Black Mountain Zn (SA) and Pering Zn (SA) still carry that label), the Algerian rows labelled Saharan Metacraton, and the status given for Lueshe Nb (DRC). These will be reviewed by 23 November 2026. Each change is made against named sources under the Quality Standard and dated on the audit log.

Afrimintel's Editor-in-Chief holds two positions in the Great Lakes region: Honorary Consul of Rwanda in Mauritius, and Chairman of MUA Insurance Rwanda. Neither role involves mining, mineral assets, or any company appearing in this layer, and neither carries any interest in the outcome of any record in it. They are disclosed here because this layer carries records on jurisdictions to which those positions relate, which makes them material to a reader assessing those records. Coverage and treatment of these jurisdictions are on the same terms as every other jurisdiction; the positions constrain who Afrimintel transacts with, not what it publishes. See /methodology/independence/ §7. Independence Policy §7.

Free to reuse under CC BY 4.0, with attribution. The register is archived on Zenodo with a permanent DOI, 10.5281/zenodo.22664745, which always resolves to the newest version. Cite the archived copy; the feeds above are the live form and move with the platform. The full citation, the version history and the corrections made between versions are on /cite/. An error in a row can be reported to nikesh@afrimintel.com and is corrected under the Quality Standard; every correction is dated on the audit log.