Africa Mining Investment Opportunities: Licences, Minerals and the Route to Market

Mining investment in Africa is discussed in terms of geology. The geology is rarely the problem. What separates a mining investment that produces from one that becomes a dispute is the licence tier you actually hold, whether anyone will process the material, and whether you have a physical route to a buyer. This article works through those three in order.

What each licence tier actually permits

Mineral title in most African jurisdictions is granted in a ladder, and the rights at each rung are narrower than investors assume. Nigeria’s regime under the Minerals and Mining Act is representative of the structure used across much of the continent:

Three things sit outside the licence and defeat more projects than any of the above: surface rights, which are held by the occupier and must be separately negotiated and compensated; community agreement, which is a statutory requirement in a growing number of jurisdictions and a practical requirement everywhere; and artisanal occupancy, where people are already working the ground your licence covers. A title acquired without resolving all three is a legal right to a site you cannot enter.

Minerals: where demand and route to market line up

Indicative view of the categories most often asked about. These are generalisations across a continent and should be tested country by country.

The processing gap is the opportunity and the obligation

An increasing number of African governments have restricted or banned the export of unprocessed ore, with the explicit intention of forcing value addition onshore. The policy is enforced unevenly but the direction is consistent, and an investment case built on shipping raw ore out should be stress-tested against it.

Read as an opportunity rather than a constraint, this is the clearest gap in African mining: between the pit and the smelter there is very little mid-stream capacity. Crushing, screening, washing, gravity concentration, drying and bagging are modest engineering problems with established equipment, and they convert unsellable material into a product with an international specification. The capital is a fraction of a mine’s, and the counterparty risk is lower because the customer is an industrial buyer rather than a government.

Where mining investments fail

1. Title that does not survive diligence. Overlapping grants, expired licences presented as current, licences held by an individual rather than the company you are buying, or unpaid annual service fees that have triggered revocation. Verify at the cadastral registry, in person, against the coordinates — not against a photocopy.
2. No resource, only an occurrence. A pit showing good material is not a resource statement. Without drilling to a recognised reporting standard there is no basis for a mine plan, and no lender will look at it.
3. Logistics arithmetic done last. For every mineral except gold and gemstones, transport is a large share of delivered cost. A deposit 600 km from a bulk berth on a road with axle-load limits may be geologically excellent and commercially impossible.
4. Community conflict. Always more expensive than the budget allowed for, and the single most common cause of operations halting after capital has been committed.
5. Offtake assumed. Traders will indicate interest at a price for a specification. That is not an offtake agreement, and an indicative price is not a committed one.

Honest assessment

Mining is the least forgiving sector in this series. It is capital-intensive, slow, politically exposed, and the information asymmetry between a local vendor and a foreign investor is enormous. The sector rewards operators who can verify things physically and who are prepared to spend money on drilling and title verification before, not after, acquisition. It punishes investors who buy a story and a set of documents.

The better risk-adjusted positions for most entrants are mid-stream processing, equipment supply and offtake trading rather than exploration — all three generate cash earlier and none depends on a discovery.

Where Wigmore Trading comes in

We are a Nigerian-registered trading and logistics company, and we work the commercial and physical end of mining rather than the exploration end.

• Offtake and export trading for mineral concentrates and industrial minerals — we buy, consolidate and export, which gives a producer a locally invoiced sale rather than a hunt for a foreign buyer
• Export documentation and compliance: mineral title verification, export permits, royalty and inspection formalities, and the certificates buyers require
• Freight and bulk logistics — haulage from site, port handling, container or bulk vessel booking. We can quote a vessel for a parcel through our vessel charter tool
• Equipment import and clearing for crushers, screens, washing plant, pumps, generators and spares, delivered duty-paid to site
• Counterparty and title due diligence before you pay anyone for a licence or a parcel of material

For export cost and duty questions, our trade tools cover landed cost, HS codes and freight.

Next step: tell us the mineral, the location and the stage. We will tell you what the route to market looks like, what it costs per tonne to get there, and whether the numbers survive contact with freight. Contact the desk.

Mining law, licence terms, royalty rates and export restrictions differ by country and are amended frequently. This article is indicative as at 2026 and is not legal, technical or investment advice. Verify title at the relevant cadastral registry and take qualified geological and legal advice before committing capital.