(Business in Cameroon) – On September 13, 2024, Cameroon’s interim Minister of Mines, Fuh Calistus Gentry, handed an exploitation permit to Camalco, the Cameroonian subsidiary of Australian mining firm Canyon Resources. This permit allows the company to begin developing the Minim-Martap bauxite deposit in the Adamawa region. According to the Ministry of Mines, the permit was signed by President Paul Biya on September 2, 2024, officially marking the countdown for the project’s implementation.
This is Cameroon’s third solid mining license in two years and the fourth in the country’s history. In 2022, as part of efforts to accelerate mining projects in the country, two exploitation permits for iron ore were issued. The first permit was granted to Chinese company Sinosteel on July 1, 2024, for developing the Lobé iron ore deposit near Kribi in the South region. On August 17, 2022, Cameroon Mining Company Sarl (CMC) received a permit for the Mbalam-Nabeba iron ore deposit, located on the border between Cameroon and Congo.
However, the first-ever solid mining license in Cameroon was issued in 2003 to Geovic for nickel and cobalt mining at the Nkamouna deposit in the East region. Geovic abandoned the project in 2013 and later sold its assets to Phoenix Mining in 2022, which has yet to begin operations. Sinosteel and CMC Sarl are also still awaiting the start of their mining activities. There is hope that Canyon Resources, through Camalco, will be more successful in advancing the bauxite project.
The Ministry of Mines is optimistic about the project’s timeline. They announced that in 2025, the foundation stone will be laid, with plans to hire over 100 Cameroonians for this initial phase. By 2027, the bauxite is expected to be processed into alumina. This will make Cameroon the first African country with a complete bauxite-to-alumina transformation chain.
Despite this optimism, sources close to the project say that transporting the bauxite from the mine to Douala port remains a key challenge.
Canyon Resources’ latest analysis of the Minim-Martap deposit reveals a potential of 892 million tons of bauxite across 16 of the 79 identified bauxite plateaus, with 250 million tons classified as “very high-grade”—ideal for aluminum production. According to James Durrant, Canyon’s former project lead, further exploration of the remaining 63 plateaus could raise the total potential to 2 billion tons, making it “probably the largest deposit in the world, in both quantity and quality.”
