en.Wedoany.com Reported - Jacob Mbele, Director-General of South Africa's Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources, stated that South Africa will fully introduce a mineral rights database (i.e., cadastre) within 10 months. This online register, used to display mining and exploration rights, has seen its long-delayed rollout disappoint investors.

Speaking at a conference in Johannesburg, Mbele said the government has set a target to include all nine provinces of South Africa in the database by the end of March 2027. Currently, only data from the Western Cape province, which has the least mining activity in South Africa, has been incorporated into the system.

South Africa is a major producer of gold, iron ore, coal, and platinum group metals. Although the country remains the leading mineral exporter on the African continent, mining sectors in countries such as Guinea, Zimbabwe, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo are growing faster and seeing more transactions. Mbele noted that South Africa has a long history of commercial mining, requiring the migration of vast amounts of existing data from legacy systems to the new database—a challenge less complex in many other countries.

In January 2024, the South African government appointed a consortium to create the new system. Major mining companies operating in South Africa include Valterra Platinum Ltd., Exxaro Resources Ltd., and Gold Fields Ltd. Establishing this database is considered particularly important for stimulating investment in small-scale and exploration mining companies.

At the same event on Tuesday, the Minerals Council South Africa criticized a new industrial strategy released by the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition. The lobbying group specifically pointed out that proposals to impose tariffs and quotas on chrome ore exports, as well as suggestions to include beneficiation (i.e., further processing) conditions in mining license allocation decisions, could harm future investment in mineral exploration and extraction.

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