JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – South Africa, with its incredible minerals endowment and extraordinary untapped potential, is definitely under-explored, Anglo American CEO Duncan Wanblad said in response to questions after virtually presenting on day-two of the Joburg Indaba.

Wanblad was responding to a question posed by Joburg Indaba chairperson Bernard Swanepoel on what the London- and Johannesburg-listed Anglo can do to revive exploration in South Africa. (Also watch attached Creamer Media video.)

“Anglo, as with many of our majors, have abandoned exploration in South Africa. I’ll point a finger and say all our major mining companies have used the opportunity to internationalise, to go to other jurisdictions, perfectly legitimately. Have you contributed as Anglo to the fact that there has been zero exploration in South Africa, and I’m overstating, in the last 20 years?

“Are you part of the problem and what can an Anglo do to revive exploration in South Africa?”

Wanblad conceded that statistics show that not a lot of exploration has been done in South Africa and that Anglo has not prioritised exploration in South Africa for a while, not owing to South Africa as such but owing to prioritisation of areas most prospective for commodities being sought.

“We also have to structurally look at the way the system is set up for exploration in South Africa. It doesn’t feel to me that exploration in South Africa is in any way incentivised, so I’m not sure that any one company is to blame for the current situation.

“But perhaps more systemically, if we wanted exploration to occur and ultimately be able to exploit the resource base that was there, South Africa would have to set up an environment that was more accommodative of investment into exploration, which is a multi-year investment.

“It takes an extraordinarily long time and a lot of money to get to the point of understanding the security of the resources you would have, what the level of ownership is of the resource, and I think these are things that would need to be solved,” said Wanblad.

The South African mining sector’s contribution to gross domestic product has fallen from 10% in 1993 to about 4.4% in 2022, the lowest it has been during this 30-year period. The country is foregoing billions of rands in output as a result of the challenging business environment.