Pan-African MineTech Workshop Seeks Homegrown Solutions to Africa’s Mining Challenges

Zambia is hosting mining innovators, government representatives and industry stakeholders from across Africa to explore locally developed technologies that address the continent’s mining and mineral exploration challenges.

The Pan-African MineTech Hub Exploration Technology Pre-Incubation Workshop, held in Lusaka on 15 October 2026, brought together participants from Zambia, Botswana, Malawi, Liberia, Nigeria and Zimbabwe. Organised under the timbuktoo Africa initiative, the workshop focused on turning Africa’s mineral wealth into homegrown technology, innovation and new business opportunities.

Discussions examined Africa’s mineral innovation landscape and the needs of Zambia’s mining and mineral exploration sector, with participants exploring ways to strengthen exploration capabilities and connect industry challenges with technology development.

The workshop also focused on identifying gaps in existing technologies, understanding practical exploration challenges and establishing pathways for testing and validating new solutions against real-world industry requirements.

A key objective is to build a pipeline of African innovators who can progress from identifying mining challenges to developing solutions ready for further incubation, commercialisation and wider adoption.

The initiative brings together government, mining companies, universities, development partners and the timbuktoo UniPods network to strengthen collaboration between researchers, entrepreneurs and industry. This approach is intended to help promising innovations move beyond the development stage towards practical applications that can be tested and scaled.

For Africa’s mining sector, locally developed technologies could offer opportunities to address operational challenges while strengthening technical expertise, entrepreneurship and the continent’s capacity to develop its own mining solutions.

The workshop reflects a broader effort to ensure that Africa captures more value from its mineral resources, not only through extraction but also through technology development, innovation and the growth of local businesses serving the mining industry.