* 5 hours ago. Stock HeadOn to rare earths (REEs) and Ionic Rare...

* 5 hours ago. Stock Head

On to rare earths (REEs) and Ionic Rare Earths (ASX:IXR) is looking to be Uganda’s – and Africa’s – first ionic adsorption, clay-hosted (IAC) REE project to get off the ground.

The explorer owns 60% of the Makuutu project which has a current (and massive) resource of 532Mt @ 640 parts per million (ppm) total rare earths oxide (TREO) containing 71% magnet and heavy rare earth carbonate (MREC) which contain high value neodymium and praseodymium (NdPr). It’s also currently proving up extensions to the known mineralisation.

Just last month, the company received a Large Scale Mining License for Makuutu, a reflection of strong support from the Ugandan government and the first ever such licence under its Mining Act of 2022.


Is everyone forgetting how cheap it is to mine critical minerals in Africa? Maybe? Or maybe not.

A quick scrape of the ASX will tell you there are quite a few early movers into the world’s Garden of Eden, proving up mineral wealth in vastly underexplored jurisdictions with little to no previous mining nous for rare, in-demand commodities.

Like nimble gazelles, intrepid ASX-listed mining juniors are leaping into near-virgin mining territory and attracting a helluva lot of attention from a bunch of OEMs, Sovereign Wealth Funds and governments both foreign and domestic.

The big cats are also jumping on board to help explorers cut red tape, provide funding, and accelerate the development of minerals projects necessary for our jump into cleaner energy sources.

Let’s take a look:

US-Saudi partnership to spend big in Africa

None are more publicly stating their plans to foray into Africa than the Saudis and US – announcing a partnership late last year to invest US$15 billion into the continent to secure critical minerals supply.

Saudi investment minister Khalid Al-Falih has publicly announced the nation would use its sovereign wealth fund to make “game-changing investments” into Africa.

Commenting on behalf of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Gracelin Baskaran says the partnership – for African countries in particular – is lucrative, as the land of the two holy mosques plan to be producing 500,000 EVs annually by 2030.