Qualla: Kanyika mine

Kanyika mine: Introduction

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Niobium is not a metal most people can picture. It is soft, silver-gray, mostly invisible to consumers, and essential. A pinch of it added to steel turns an ordinary alloy into the kind used in jet engine blades, gas pipelines, and the superconducting magnets that run MRI machines. Most of the world's niobium comes from a single mine in Brazil. Any alternate source is strategically interesting. In northern Malawi, about 250 kilometers north of the capital Lilongwe, the Kanyika deposit holds what is considered one of the largest niobium mineral resources in the country, an estimated 60 million tonnes of ore grading at 0.29 percent niobium metal. For nearly two decades, that geology has collided with the lives of 243 Malawian families who happened to live on top of it.

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Kanyika mine: An Australian Company and a License

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Prospecting at Kanyika began in 2006, when Globe Metals and Mining, an Australia-based company listed on the Australian Securities Exchange, received an Exclusive Prospecting License from the Malawian government. The initial plan was a joint venture with Thuthuka Group, a South A...

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Kanyika mine: What the Mine Would Be

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Kanyika is designed as an open-pit operation, a vast terraced hole from which ore would be trucked to an associated refinery, also to be built. After processing, the end product would be mostly ferroniobium, the alloy form used by steelmakers. Globe Metals and Mining's executive ...

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Kanyika mine: Water, Uranium, and Hunger

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The project's environmental assessments raised concerns that deserve to be taken seriously. Water drawn from borehole wells in the Kanyika area already contained levels of uranium above World Health Organization recommendations, before any large-scale mining. Local reporting from...

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Kanyika mine: Displacement and Compensation

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The human story of Kanyika is not yet resolved. Civil society organizations, including the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace and ActionAid, have pushed hard for residents who will be displaced by the mine to receive adequate consultation and fair compensation. Inkosi Mabi...

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Kanyika mine: The Wider Question

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Kanyika sits at the center of a set of choices that African governments and foreign investors are making across the continent. Chinese state-owned enterprises and development banks are putting up the capital. Australian junior mining companies provide the licenses and technical e...

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