Mine excursion
AfriTin breathes
new life into Damaraland
A South African-headed, London-listed company, AfriTin is on a major drive to
resuscitate tin mining in the Damaraland region of Namibia. Leon Louw visited
AfriTin’s Uis project during a road trip to the country last year.
W
Gold Fields’ Rooiberg Mine in the Limpopo
Province, and the South African government-
owned Iscor’s Uis tin mine in Namibia, were
forced to pull the plug.
Meanwhile, more than 3 500km north,
to the north-east of Rooiberg, thousands of
artisanal miners descended upon a tin-rich
outcrop called Bisie, which lay deep
within the thick tropical forest of
the Democratic Republic
of the Congo (DRC),
close to a
small village called Walikale, in the North
Kivu Province. For years they toiled in the
deep tunnels of Bisie, until, in 2011, Alphamin
Resources announced that they had stumbled
upon one of the highest-grade tin deposits in
the world.
hen tin became unfashionable
towards the latter parts
of the previous century,
many significant deposits
disappeared off the investment radar. As
the price of tin deteriorated, operating
mines closed shop in haste, leaving working
infrastructure intact. Exploration programmes
were discontinued, as the future of tin looked
gloomy. For more than 20 years, the tin market
barely survived. Demand for tin was subdued
to say the least, and much of the market was
supplied by one or two major mines, with the
recycling sector and scores of small-scale
mining companies and artisanal
miners producing the balance.
Big operations like
The mine dumps in Uis have been drilled and tested for the presence of lithium.
[14] MINING MIRROR MAY 2019
www.miningmirror.co.za