News & Insights
Updates and analysis on mining exploration and management projects in Angola, driving resource optimization and sector growth.
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The Five-Year Clock: What Article 125 Requires of Every Prospecting Title Holder in Angola
Angola's Mining Code sets a hard deadline that many licence holders underestimate. At the end of the initial five-year prospecting period, half the concession area must go back to the State — and what is retained, and on what evidentiary basis, is decided by the record the holder has built along the way.
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ANRM's Inspection Mandate: What the Regulator Actually Checks in the Field
Created in 2020, Angola's National Mineral Resources Agency now sits between the licence holder and the ministry on almost every technical decision. Its published inspection remit names field verification of prospecting work and analysis of research reports explicitly.
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PLANAGEO: A Decade of Public Geoscience and What It Changed for Licence Applicants
Between 2014 and 2022 Angola completed one of the largest public geoscience programmes undertaken anywhere in recent decades. The resulting datasets are now part of the baseline against which new applications and retained areas are assessed.
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Angola in the EITI: Membership, Score, and What Reporting Obligations Reach Licence Holders
Angola joined the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative in June 2022. Three years on, its first validation places it in the lower band of implementers — a result that sets the direction of travel for disclosure expectations across the sector.
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The Lobito Corridor Reaches Financial Close: Logistics as a Variable in Project Economics
In July 2026 the Lobito Atlantic Railway concession reached financial close on a USD 753 million package led by the US Development Finance Corporation. For inland Angolan projects, haulage economics have historically been the constraint that decides whether a deposit is developable.
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Beyond Diamonds: Where Angola's Non-Diamond Pipeline Actually Stands
Diamonds still dominate Angola's mining revenues, and 2025 showed why concentration is a risk. Meanwhile a second pipeline — iron, copper and rare earths — has moved from prospectus to construction, and each project carries a different regulatory profile.
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Reference map
Mineral occurrences across Angola
The Instituto Geológico de Angola maintains the national inventory of mineral occurrences: 36 substances — among them gold, copper, iron ore, manganese, tin and rare-earth elements — plotted against provincial boundaries, the main river systems and the railway network.
It is the public baseline we start from when screening licence areas and when reporting on the country's exploration landscape.
Explore the interactive map
Geological cartography by the Instituto Geológico de Angola (IGEO), reproduced with express attribution of authorship. Rights remain with the author.
Open the full-size map