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As the global scramble for critical minerals intensifies, there is a clear opportunity to leverage cutting-edge technology to build more transparent, efficient, and resilient supply chains, in Africa and beyond, that will define the geopolitics of the coming decades. The deployment of AI and big data tools in African mining offers clear promises and opportunities, with notable advances in mineral exploration and digital mapping.

Illustrative cases of tech advances in operations and processing are clustered in the more developed mining contexts of Southern Africa, highlighting patterns of uneven adoption and geographical disparities on the continent.

This report, authored by Anthony Carroll and Jef Karel Caers, demonstrates that the path to capturing greater value from critical minerals, securing supply chains, and fostering durable economic growth will require moving beyond legacy extraction models and siloed foreign investments in AI and mining.

The United States and its strategic partners should embrace a cohesive strategy that integrates technological innovation with local African capacity and infrastructure development to strengthen energy access and modernize logistics corridors. Only then can African nations, the United States, and US allies transform mining on the continent from a low-tech commodity enterprise into a data-driven engine of growth.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Anthony Carroll, esquire, is an international affairs consultant with five decades of experience as an investor, philanthropist, and thought leader in Africa. He is a co-founder and executive board member of Mining Indaba and serves on the board of ReElement Technologies. He has held fellowships with the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and served as an adjunct professor of African Studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. He also served in the Peace Corps in Botswana.

Jef Karel Caers, PhD, is professor of Earth and planetary sciences at Stanford University. His research focuses on decision-making under uncertainty, critical mineral supply chains, and the transition to renewable energy. He has published in journals covering mathematics, statistics, Earth sciences, engineering, and computer science. He is the founder of Mineral-X, a community-building effort developing technological innovations and new pathways in the mineral supply chain, from upstream exploration to processing. Mineral-X is funded in part by KoBold Metals, Ideon, Fleet Space, and Xcalibur Smart Mapping, all of which are mentioned in the report.

The authors thank Archibald Henry, independent expert on African affairs, and David Zhen Yin, co-founder of Stanford Mineral-X, for research support and contributions to the report.