Centre for Environmental Rights – Advancing Environmental Rights in South Africa

The South African Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources published the Critical Minerals and Metals Strategy  in May 2025.

The strategy is divided up into the following sections:

1. South African Position on Critical Minerals
2. Critical Minerals Strategic Overview
3. Pillars of the Strategy and Interventions
4. Key Considerations for Successful Implementation of the Strategy

This strategy proposes the following catalytic interventions to maximise the full benefits of critical minerals:

• Provision of targeted mineral specific, sector wide and cross-cutting incentive packages, including tempering with administered prices
• Increasing exploration investments
• Developing and appropriately utilising quality geoscience data
• Developing technology innovations for mining efficiency to reduce costs and risks, improve recoveries and support technological startups
• Addressing bulk infrastructure bottlenecks
• Strengthen regional partnerships for production and regional beneficiation hubs
• Conduct higher value-added processing of minerals