Mining Indaba 2025: A Turning Point for Africa’s Mining Future:
The Mining Indaba 2025 conference, held in Cape Town from 9-12 February, marked a defining moment in the evolution of Africa’s mining industry, with a renewed focus on sustainability, social responsibility, and strategic global partnerships. For the first time in its history, the conference prioritized the voices of indigenous peoples and local communities in what is an acknowledgment of their indispensable role in shaping the sector’s future. Their active participation in key sessions provided valuable perspectives on equitable mining practices and showed the industry’s growing commitment to inclusivity and responsible resource management.
This year’s event tackled some of the most pressing issues facing the mining sector, particularly the geopolitical choices that mineral-rich African nations must navigate. With the world’s appetite for essential minerals, especially copper and cobalt, continuing to surge amid the global energy transition, Africa faces a range of critical decisions concerning how to ensure mineral production without neglecting the local societies in the mining areas. These considerations will shape the future of the industry as the continent positions itself as a key player in the global supply chain.
A key highlight of the conference was the prominent role played by China’s CMOC, the world’s largest cobalt producer. CMOC’s leadership, including head of its subsidiary IXM Kenny Ives, articulated a vision for Africa’s mining sector that balances opportunity with responsibility. Ives underscored the untapped potential within the continent, emphasizing, “There remains so much potential in Africa where opportunities are either untapped or under-tapped.”
CMOC executives stressed that the world is at a defining moment, as industries transition from a fossil-fuel-based economy to one driven by critical minerals essential for electrification and decarbonization. “We are at a very critical juncture where the world is transitioning from a fossil-fuelled-based reality to a new energy materials-enabled reality where we electrify our energy and transport systems. It’s revolutionary,” Kenny Ives stated at the Cape Town conference.
With the demand for battery metals surging, there is a clear consensus for the need to ensure that mining operations remain both environmentally and socially sustainable. Many companies operating in Africa, including Rio Tinto, CMOC and others, have been making efforts to position themselves as leaders in responsible mining by highlighting their commitment to top-tier ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) performance. According to Ives, CMOC’s approach is to ‘fixate on best-in-class ESG performance whilst managing the logistics and marketing proactively”, all the while maximising “the value of our products through the cycle, benefiting all stakeholders.”
Indeed, CMOC’s sustainability efforts have garnered significant recognition in recent years. CMOC was awarded an AA rating by Morgan Stanley Capital International, while CMOC subsidiary IXM has been awarded the ECOVADIS gold certificate for sustainability work. The emphasis on sustainability is further reflected in CMOC’s carbon footprint, which is significantly lower than industry averages, with Ives emphasising that CMOC’s “carbon intensity is 91% below the industry average, and our copper, cobalt, and niobium products can all truly be considered ‘GREEN.’”
Beyond environmental considerations, the conference underscored the broader social responsibilities of miners operating across Africa, particularly in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where many large miners operate some of the most important global mining projects.
“CMOC is the largest taxpayer in the DRC. In 2024, CMOC paid $ 1.715 billion in taxes and related payments to the Public Treasury and other public administration services,” stated Ives, emphasising that the company adheres to strict legal and moral principles. The company’s contributions extend beyond financial obligations, with a substantial investment in community development initiatives, and “CMOC continues to make significant investments in community development, funding a total of $ 186 million in community projects in the DRC since 2017.”
These commitments illustrate a model of mining that prioritizes long-term community benefits while meeting the world’s increasing demand for essential minerals. As the industry moves forward, CMOC’s leadership stressed that sustainable mining practices are not just an ethical imperative but a strategic necessity, indispensable for the global green transition to be achieved, and “mining needs to be done responsibly, sustainably, and with a view towards making communities thrive.”
The overarching theme of the conference was the need to prepare Africa’s mining sector for the future, ensuring that it remains competitive, responsible, and aligned with global sustainability goals. Minding companies and the communities in which they operate are logically the key players in this. The need to “future-proof African mining is about ensuring we are ready to meet global demand while maintaining high standards of sustainability and governance”, Ives stated, making it clear that the world’s ambitions are going nowhere without the truly equitable involvement of Africa.
Trump ends SA’s HIV and TB research grants:
Cancellation letters, which end billions of rands of South African universities’ US-government funded HIV and TB research grants with immediate effect, started to roll in over the weekend — and according to one affected researcher it’s anticipated that over 300 such grants will be ended, holding massive implications for tertiary learning and research institutions, such as substantive job losses.
Some experts estimate that as much as 70% of South Africa’s medical research, or up to $ 400-million (about R7.2-billion) when both direct and subgrants are considered for the past financial year, is funded through the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is made up of 27 institutes and centres that each focuses on a specific area of research. The NIH finances about three-quarters of biomedical research worldwide.
On Friday evening, the University of the Witwatersrand’s Wits Health Consortium, the unit through which the institution runs its clinical trials and donor-funded projects, received cancellation letters for all components of a grant of $ 2.5-million (about R460-million, which ends in November 2027. The grant was awarded through the NIH’s National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases.
Cancellation letters, sent on behalf of the chief grants management officer of USAid, Emily Linde, seem to be standard and tell researchers that “they do nothing to expand our knowledge of living systems, provide low returns on investment, and ultimately do not enhance health, lengthen life, or reduce illness” and accuse them of harming “the health of Americans”.
The Wits project was run by chief investigators Helen Rees, the head of the Wits Reproductive Health Institute, and Ian Sanne, heading the Clinical HIV Research Unit, who now also works for the international development group, Palladium as its chief medical officer.
“Ironically, our grant ended on Human Rights Day. That day is there to help and protect the vulnerable. Now the US government is forcing us to do the opposite,” Sanne told Bhekisisa. “Trial volunteers will be put at risk if studies are stopped abruptly. Is this compliant with international standards of human ethics?”
The research, which has been running since 2007, fell under the Wits Research Group Clinical Trials Unit, and conducted HIV and TB prevention and treatment studies, as well as trials for hepatitis and HIV-related cancers.
Termination letters
Other grants that have, so far, reportedly been ended include research projects at the Centre for the Aids Programme of Research in South Africa, Caprisa, headed up by Salim and Quarraisha Abdool Karim.
Some South African universities, that were subgrantees of health research awards from US universities such as Columbia University in New York, were sent stop-work orders on Friday, after the US institutions lost their own grants. The SA institutions prefer to not be named at this stage.
Science magazine reports that the former head of the South African Medical Research Council, Glenda Gray, “received notice that her $ 3.1-million (about R56.5-million) grant for a clinical trial unit in Soweto [run through Wits] has moved from an approved to a pending status”.
The Centre for the Aids Programme of Research in South Africa, Caprisa, headed up by Salim and Quarraisha Abdool Karim, which receives considerable NIH funds, is on red alert: “We have not received any NIH grant termination letters yet. We are expecting them anytime,” Salim Abdool Karim told Bhekisisa on Sunday morning.
US faces TB outbreaks
Over the years, some of the HIV prevention studies at Sanne’s and Rees’s project were carried out on groups of people with a higher chance of getting HIV, such as teen girls and young women in Africa, transgender people and female sex workers.
Their cancellation email stated their “award no longer effectuates agency priorities” and that “research programmes based primarily on artificial and non-scientific categories, including amorphous equity objectives, are antithetical to the scientific inquiry, do nothing to expand our knowledge of living systems, provide low returns on investment, and ultimately do not enhance health, lengthen life, or reduce illness”.
Worst of all, the note said, “so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) studies are often used to support unlawful discrimination on the basis of race and other protected characteristics, which harms the health of Americans. Therefore, it is the policy of NIH not to prioritise such research programmes.”
The letter’s references to diversity, equity and inclusion likely refer to the Wits unit’s research on transgender people and female sex workers, groups that the Trump administration doesn’t like.
On the night of his inauguration, on January 20, the president signed an executive order banning people’s right to identify as transgender or non-binary individuals. There are only two genders, the executive order declared: male and female.
But Sanne says the references to DEI in their letter don’t make sense; although some of their research has focused on groups such as transgender people and sex workers, a large part of their work is focused on finding effective TB treatment for children and better medicine for people with multidrug-resistant TB, as well as preventive TB treatment.
“In many ways, our work ticks every box of President Trump’s ‘let’s make America great’ boxes. It makes America safer, stronger and more prosperous, because it will protect people against falling ill from TB and most of the patents and intellectual property of new medicines that we test lie with US companies.”
Experts weigh in
Linda-Gail Bekker, who heads up the Desmond Tutu Health Foundation at the University of Cape Town, and also receives NIH funding, warns the additional body blow to our clinical research enterprise comes at a time that new TB infections “are the highest it’s been for a long time in the USA”.
The state of Kansas is seeing the largest TB outbreak that the US has seen in the past 30 to 40 years (TB is a disease that has been under control in the US for decades). More than 60 TB disease cases and also two deaths have been reported.
By Saturday, Bekker had not received a cancellation letter for her grant, but says: “Bringing the HIV and TB epidemics to a place where they no longer bear a public health threat is of global concern. South Africa has played a significant role and contributed to our understanding and progress in that quest.”
Yogan Pillay, the head of HIV and TB delivery at the Gates Foundation, which also funds HIV and TB research, and whose work the US government’s funding cuts is likely to affect, warns: “The cuts mean that innovation on preventing and treatment of HIV will stall and eliminating or ending Aids will now be but a dream, and HIV will continue to spread.
“It’s absolutely tragic.”
‘No corrective action is possible here’
The Wits project did important TB research. One study, published in February and included on the NIH website, looked at how well doubling doses of the antiretroviral drug, dolutegravir works for TB patients.
Previous trials looked at how safe it was for pregnant women with HIV to take preventive TB medicine, at how well long-acting, injectable forms of antiretroviral therapy worked for teens and how well the two-monthly anti-HIV jab worked.
Sanne says “it is inconceivable that [Elon Musk’s so-called] department of government efficiency [which is leading cuts on US government spending], does not understand that there is more than just DEI activities happening through HIV and other research”.
The email said: “Although NIH generally will suspend (rather than immediately terminate) a grant and allow the recipient an opportunity to take appropriate corrective action before NIH makes a termination decision, no corrective action is possible here.
“The premise of this award is incompatible with agency priorities, and no modification of the project could align the project with agency priorities.’”
Terminations not unexpected
But the grant terminations were not unexpected — or, at least not since last week.
On March 12, Science magazine reported that the NIH’s acting director, Matthew Memoli, asked officials at the Institutes to compile lists of South Africa-related grants. The email had similar wording to other NIH requests for information that led to the termination of dozens of grants involving transgender health, vaccine hesitancy, and other topics the administration does not support.”
At least 300 US university projects have also had their grants terminated by the Trump administration, many of them US universities, leading to protests across America.
The terminations come as part of what the Trump administration considers cost-savings or research not adhering to its ideologies and are likely to continue around the world.
South African researchers have started talks with philanthropic foundations and the government to step in with funding, Sanne says, “but there are not yet clear outcomes”.
Projects in South Africa that received cancellation letters were told that they could “object and provide information and documentation challenging” their terminations.
But they first have to follow a “first-level grant appeal procedure that must be exhausted” before they’re allowed to “file an appeal with the departmental appeals board.”
Should projects choose to appeal, they have to submit a request within 30 days after receiving their terminations.
Sanne says he plans to make use of the appeal process and if unsuccessful, at the very least negotiate a way to terminate trials ethically and responsibly. “Our research saves lives and the NIH has helped us to do that,” he explains. “What we now need to do is to convince them of the value of that rather than to terminate decades of investments that will result in the loss of lives.”
The Gates Foundation is mentioned in this article. Bhekisisa receives funding from the Foundation, but is editorially independent of the foundation.
This story was produced by the Bhekisisa Centre for Health Journalism. Sign up for the newsletter.
Tests confirm presence of high pathogenicity avian flu on South Africa’s Marion Island:
The department of forestry, fisheries and environment has confirmed the presence of the high pathogenicity avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1 virus on South Africa’s sub-Antarctic territory of Marion Island.
Samples collected from September to December last year were shipped back to mainland South Africa on the SA Agulhas II in February this year, according to the department. In March, polymerase chain reaction testing confirmed infection in six bird species: the wandering albatross, king penguin, brown skua, southern giant petrel, northern giant petrel and the sooty albatross.
“Following an initial suspected HPAI case in a brown skua at Marion Island — a bird showing clinical signs of HPAI infection including twitching and tremors — in mid-September 2024, more similar cases were reported in early November and mortalities in multiple species have continued into March 2025, though the overall death rate slowed significantly in January,” it said.
The department noted that the reduced mortality rate is “promising”. But 31 bird species breed on Marion Island and because the bird species and age composition varies throughout the year, “it is difficult to predict how the outbreak will progress”.
The potential effects on marine mammals are also of concern but no increased mortality has been reported in any mammal species so far.
Among the wandering albatrosses, chicks were mostly affected with at least 150 of about 1 900 from the 2024 cohort having died. In other species adults have been worse affected: at least 80 adult brown skuas and about 120 adult king penguins. Much smaller numbers of affected giant petrels — at least 20 southern and four northern — and five sooty albatrosses were observed.
“The deaths of adult seabirds are of greater concern than chicks, because most species start to breed from three to 10 years of age, and most affected species raise at most one chick per year,” the department said, noting that there are also a multitude of other threats to seabirds, including fisheries bycatch, climate change, plastic pollution and predation by introduced house mice on Marion Island.
Marion Island, along with neighbouring Prince Edward Island, provides critical breeding and moulting grounds for millions of seabirds and marine mammals, including nearly half of the world’s wandering albatrosses, hundreds of thousands of penguins, and large numbers of southern elephant seals and sub-Antarctic and Antarctic fur seals.
The archipelago is located in the south western Indian Ocean, about 2 000km southeast of Cape Town and halfway between Africa and Antarctica.
Observations of and laboratory test results for HPAI (H5N1) on Marion Island can assist in inferring the potential risk to animals on Prince Edward Island because they share various ecological characteristics.
Visits to Prince Edward Island are limited to one visit every four years to preserve its pristine state. The last survey was undertaken in November 2023.
Having spread around the world since 2021, HPAI (H5N1) was detected in seabirds and marine mammals in South Georgia, southeast of South America, in October 2023.
It reached the Antarctic Peninsula in February 2024 and was detected at the French archipelagos of Crozet and Kerguelen (950km and 2300km east of Marion, respectively) in October and November 2024. The virus can be transported long distances by migrating birds, and the virus moved from South Georgia to the French islands.
“The situation on Marion Island is being closely monitored by the field personnel overwintering on the island, who have been trained to recognise possible HPAI signs in birds and seals and in the necessary monitoring and mitigation methods,” the department said.
“They will continue to take all precautions to ensure they do not spread the virus. There are few other disease mitigation tools available in this type of situation.
“The HPAI protocol that has been implemented on Marion Island was developed by the department, the management authority for the Prince Edward Islands, together with Western Cape veterinary services, marine ornithologists, marine mammal biologists, disease experts and colleagues overseas with similar experience,” the department said.
Efforts to monitor and to hopefully limit the spread of the virus on the island would continue.
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