In our last interview, Mining For Zambia spoke to KoBold Metals’ co-founder and President Josh Goldman about the company’s innovative approach to mineral exploration and how it can speed up the process of finding and delineating mineral reserves. But the Mingomba reserve, into which KoBold Metals has so far invested $150 million, is just the beginning of the company’s story in Zambia.
During a recent groundbreaking ceremony, held on 6 July at its Mingomba deposit exploration site in Chililabombwe District, KoBold described the results of the drilling campaign so far as “highly encouraging.” Significant additional investments will be required to develop the Mingomba deposit into an operating mine, with an approximately eight-year lead time.
In this follow-up interview, we asked Mr Goldman to tell us about the contribution that KoBold’s project will make to Zambia, and what Zambia brings to the project.
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What role could Zambia play in reducing the world’s dependence on fossil fuels?
By our estimates, there is a $10 trillion-plus supply gap of the critical metals – copper, cobalt, nickel and lithium – that we need for a transition to a low carbon economy. These need to come from places that have been geologically endowed with raw materials, and where nature has aggregated them into economically viable concentrations so that industrial processes can take it the rest of the way to metal – and Zambia is one of those places.
The raw materials of the energy transition are going to come from all over the world, but I think Zambia, with its extraordinary natural endowment of concentrated resources, can contribute disproportionately. That will be really positive for the world, and it’ll be really positive for Zambia’s economy too.
As you point out, Zambia has an extraordinary mineral endowment. If we put minerals aside for one moment, what else does Zambia bring to the Mingomba project?
The other thing Zambia provides is extraordinary people. We need great people from top to bottom: we need great geologists and we need great finance people keeping good records and ensuring we’re compliant. We need effective Zambian leadership in all those areas, and we think there’s a strong talent base in Zambia to build this company – or ‘companies’, plural.
“We need great people from top to bottom: we need great geologists and we need great finance people keeping good records and ensuring we’re compliant. We need effective Zambian leadership in all those areas, and we think there’s a strong talent base in Zambia to build this company.”
Zambia is also a safe and peaceful place where we can operate in ways that protect the environment and support local communities, and where the government supports our investment with actions that are fair, transparent, and fast.
KoBold announced its $150 million investment in the Mingomba project in late 2022, a little over a year after the current Government came into power. Was an investment of this magnitude dependent on President Hichilema’s regime giving the right ‘signals’?
The fact that we’re making a substantial investment in the country means we’re confident we can operate a business with integrity. Acting with integrity means dealing with everyone in government honestly and transparently.
Zambia provides a good operating environment, transparency, and commitment to equal – and efficient – treatment under the law, which allows us to meet our business objectives. That’s what’s made a large investment like this possible. KoBold is committed to the highest standards of ethical conduct in business, and there are several parts of the world where we just don’t operate. If we can’t deploy large amounts of capital with confidence, then we don’t deploy the capital in the first place.
What do you expect KoBold’s project’s contribution to Zambia will be?
Perhaps the biggest benefit is that Mingomba will contribute to one of Zambia’s major national objectives: to increase copper production to three million tonnes annually. It’s going to take quite a number of new mines to get there, and Mingomba could make a really significant contribution towards President Hichilema’s goal.
Employment is another area where we’ll see major contributions being made to Zambia. We already have hundreds of people working on Mingomba, and this team deserves an exceptional leader. We’ve hired an extraordinary CEO for KoBold Zambia, Ms Mfikeyi Makayi, who is the first Zambian woman in the world to lead a major exploration company. She is a leader with an engineer’s vision, who understands that there are no shortcuts to difficult problems.
And we’re continuing to build out the leadership team. The employment that comes with a project of this scale is significant, and this will grow steadily as the we advance beyond the resource delineation phase. Once you’re actually constructing and operating a mine, employment will be on a whole different scale.

Is it significant that this investment is being made in Copperbelt Province, an area that is struggling economically after a slowdown at Mopani and KCM, two of the country’s largest mines?
Yes, it is significant. Direct investment anywhere in the country is a good thing, but a big new investment in the Copperbelt – the historic locus of copper production in Zambia, where production has declined for a number of years – is very positive for the country. The expectation, of course, is that this $150 million investment will lead to subsequent investment because it will take much more than that to build a mine. It will take more than that just to complete a feasibility study. So, we expect to invest further in this project, and elsewhere in Zambia.
“The expectation is that this $150 million investment will lead to subsequent investment because it will take much more than that to build a mine. So, we expect to invest further in this project, and elsewhere in Zambia.”
Copperbelt Province is also a very important region for Zambia, where there’s a lot of skills and infrastructure. Mingomba is sandwiched right between Lubambe and Konkola, so we expect to be operating in a region that has been a center of mining activity for a very long time.
Another area where KoBold sees an opportunity to contribute is via our new community engagement programs. We think it’s really important to get off on the right foot, make an early commitment, and start off with a very effective program for the community, and we’re pleased to have Ms Gladys Kashimoto serving as our Community Engagement Manager. We’re at the beginning of the story here, but we’ve made a significant financial commitment to this within our Mingomba investment.
Do you see knowledge transfer being part of KoBold’s contribution to the country?
Absolutely. We are bringing new technology – with a focus on software – to the mining industry. The whole point of our company is that geoscience and data science work together and blend skills to create more effective exploration programs. Data scientists learn geology, geoscientists learn some data science – and being part of that will be a great opportunity for our Zambian workforce too.

As you have explained, KoBold is bringing new technology to the exploration space. Does your technology change the need for airborne geophysical surveys? Or, if Zambia had up-to-date geophysical maps of the whole country, would it potentially speed up the discovery process?
Our technology doesn’t change the need for airborne geophysical surveys. We routinely use them – and everything that we can access – and where there’s value in adding to a particular dataset, we fly new surveys.
Parts of Zambia are somewhat well-covered with reasonably coarse [low density] geophysical data, but other parts of Zambia where there’s certainly potential for mineralisation are only lightly explored. Higher density geophysical data would help enormously, as would coverage of the whole country – which has been done in some places [like Namibia] – and we’re part of discussions with industry and government consortia about how we can add to that data set.
Are your methods and technology particularly helpful in greenfield areas where there’s little knowledge about what’s under the ground, or more so in brownfield sites (such as the Lubambe concession)?
Both. We’re currently working on about half a dozen projects in Zambia, and they range from Mingomba – which already has a large mineral resource, and lots of potential – to other very greenfield opportunities where there’s never been a single hole drilled on the entire license. Projects like that are much higher risk and take longer – and we might not discover anything – but our interests are across the board. Our technology supports each end of the spectrum, from the very greenfield cases where we’re just trying to constrain the geology and understand whether or not there are settings that could host ore deposits, through to [places where] we’re delineating resources. There are a lot of synergies between the two.
You’ve told the media on a few occasions that KoBold is an exploration company – not a mining company – and you will continue to be involved in an asset “for as long as the company can add value”. How might you add value at an operational mine, and how involved do you expect to be with Mingomba Mining once it’s a productive mine?
There are so many ways in which we can add value. Resource definition and exploration are two examples. In our conversation about resource definition, we talked about levels of uncertainty at the stage of an initial resource estimate, and the advantages of our approach. But the vast majority of resource definition drilling occurs inside operating mines because mine operators define their reserves as they’re mining. Whether you’re reducing uncertainty about the distribution of the ore in an operating mine or a greenfield project, the same concepts apply. It’s about collecting information in the most effective way possible and getting to the right level of confidence to make decisions. ‘How can you ensure you send the most consistently high-grade feeds to your mill?’ for instance.
The second way we can add value is through exploration, meaning: the expansion of mineral resources. Once you get underground and you’ve opened up a resource, you have access to more and more rock volume and you understand the deposit even better, so you can collect more data. It’s a very, very rich environment to be finding more ore, that’s how operating mines continually expand over time. Those are just two dimensions where KoBold could create major value in operational mines.
I’ll add one more point about KoBold’s contribution to Zambia: I believe that we will create a better resource at Mingomba faster than any other party. Then, when the time is right, we’ll bring in the right investment partner to help take this asset into development.
For now, our job is to move fast. Because that’s what this community, Zambia, and the world needs. And everyone will benefit when we succeed.
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Keep an eye out for our next article in this series: an exclusive interview with CEO for KoBold Zambia, Ms Mfikeyi Makayi, in which we ask the first Zambian woman to lead a major exploration company to tell us about her work at Mingomba, and how she climbed the ladder to get where she is today.
Look out for it on our website or social media platforms, or simply send your address to info@miningforzambia.com to receive an email the minute it’s published.
Header image: Drillers at Mingomba (Courtesy KoBold Metals)
See also: On the ground at Mingomba
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