Africa needs to rethink how it searches for minerals by separating geological exploration from mining, Bright Simons said, arguing that the current model leaves large parts of the continent underexplored and deprives African countries of valuable geological data.
Speaking at the Students and Young Professionals African Liberty Academy (SYPALA) 2026 in Accra, Simons said the high cost of mining discourages companies from investing in exploration unless they also see a commercial opportunity to extract the minerals they find.
“The only people who go and look for minerals are the people that intend to mine the minerals because minerals is a multi-billion dollar industry that dramatically limits the pool of the people collecting data on us,” he said.
That, Simons argued, creates a structural weakness in Africa’s mineral sector. Exploration is effectively tied to the decision to mine, meaning relatively few players have an incentive to undertake geological surveys simply to improve knowledge of what lies beneath the continent.
He said Africa still relies in some areas on geological maps dating back to the colonial period, despite advances in technology that can now produce much more detailed surveys.
The solution, he proposed, is to develop a separate exploration industry in which companies are paid to gather geological information even when they have no intention of becoming mining operators.
Such companies could use drones and other modern geospatial technologies to collect high-resolution geological data and then apply artificial intelligence to develop models capable of identifying potential mineral deposits, Simons said.
The resulting information could be placed in secure national repositories, allowing governments to build a much more comprehensive picture of their mineral resources while giving the companies that generated the data a continuing commercial interest in its use.
Under the model, a company that later uses the geological database to identify a commercially viable mineral deposit would compensate the original data creator, Simons proposed. He said this could be structured around access to the data and the subsequent discovery rather than requiring lengthy disputes over whether the information directly caused the discovery.
The proposal is intended to solve what Simons sees as a mismatch between Africa’s mineral ambitions and the incentives currently driving exploration.
Africa needs better information about its mineral resources, particularly as governments seek to identify the minerals that could support industrialisation. But the existing system places the burden of exploration largely on mining companies, which must commit substantial capital before knowing whether a commercially viable deposit exists.
Simons also sees geological information itself as an underused economic asset.
He said foreign companies are already collecting geological information in Africa and developing artificial intelligence models from the data, with some of those models subsequently being used to identify mineral opportunities in other parts of the world.
The risk, he argued, is that Africa could repeat its traditional pattern of exporting raw resources, only this time with geological information.
“We also exporting raw data and people are making money from that raw data,” he said.
A dedicated exploration industry, in his view, could change that dynamic by making geological knowledge valuable in its own right. Companies would have an incentive to gather data, governments would gain better information about their mineral endowment, and mining companies would eventually have access to a larger and more reliable exploration base.
Simons’ proposal also reflects his broader argument that Africa should not simply focus on extracting the minerals it already knows it has. Instead, countries should invest in discovering the resources that will be required for their future industrial development.
That would require exploration priorities to be linked more closely to industrialisation needs, rather than being determined primarily by which minerals international mining companies currently find most commercially attractive.
For Simons, the objective is therefore not simply to find more minerals, but to create an economic system in which exploration, geological data and mineral discoveries themselves become productive industries, giving African countries better knowledge of their resources while attracting more capital and technology into the search for them.
