Botswana
A Battery Metal Destination in Africa
Botswana
A Battery Metal Destination
in Africa
In Botswana, Aterian has two mineral projects. Four licences covering 3,516 km2 prospective for Copper and Lithium.
Aterian intends to generate growth through:
- SUPPORTIVE GOVERNMENT. Strongly democratic country, being politically and socially supportive of mining with a well-established regulatory framework.
- SKILLED WORKFORCE. Long and active mining sector with a workforce that is well educated; 88.2% are literate and most speak English.
- MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE. Well-developed infrastructure, with a highly efficient road system and rail network.
Botswana
WHY BOTSWANA?
- Mining accounts for 85 % of foreign trade and 19.9% of GDP (www.statsbots.org.bw, www.trade.gov)
- Real GDP growth (2022) of 5.8 % (worldbank.org)
- Interim Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the EU. Membership of SACU and SADC
- Ranked No.1 African mining jurisdiction in the Fraser Institute’s 2022 Investment Attractiveness Index and No.4 globally (after the USA, Australia and Canada)
- No foreign exchange controls – free repatriation of profits, dividends and capital
- The Ministry of Energy actively seeking to diversify the minerals sector from its dependence on the diamond industry.
Botswana
Kalahari Copperbelt - KCB
- The NE-trending Proterozoic belt, 800km long by up to 250km wide, stretches from northern Botswana into eastern Namibia
- The KCB district is similar in setting to the Central African Copperbelt sediment-hosted deposits of Zambia and DRC
- The belt contains copper-silver mineralisation, which is generally stratabound and hosted in metasedimentary rocks that have been folded, faulted and metamorphosed to greenschist facies during the Damara Orogeny
- Sediments at the base of the D’Kar Formation (on the contact with lower Ngwako Pan Formation) hosts copper sulphide minerals
- The outstanding potential has been hidden under Kalahari sand cover
- In 2021, the state-owned Botswana Power Corporation commissioned the North West Transmission Grid Project to supply mining projects in the KCB with reliable, cost-effective power.
Botswana
Sua Pan – Lithium
Brine Opportunity
- Three recently granted prospecting licences covering 2,517 km2 over the eastern region of the Makgadikgadi Pans in northern Botswana
- Main target commodity is lithium hosted in near-surface brines
- Lithium brine deposits are accumulations of saline groundwater that are enriched in dissolved lithium that form in a closed-basin system
- Historical data reported in a 1980’s study of the Sua Pan brines by the US Trade and Development Program indicated anomalous Lithium values
- Samples collected from the northern area of Sua Pan returned values of 103, 117 and 223 mg/l Li (the source and precise location is unknown)
- Recent processing developments such as Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE) reducing carbon, time, and costs
- DLE uses a resin or adsorption material to extract only lithium, while spent brine is reinjected into the basin aquifers with no aquifer depletion or harm to the environment
