Opportunity Issue 108

MAPS FOR GROWTH
Accelerating onshore
geoscience mapping
By Dr Nigel Hicks, Specialist Scientist – Geoscience Mapping Lead at the Council for Geoscience.
South Africa is renowned for its extensive and varied mineral
resources, including gold, platinum, diamonds, chromium
and manganese. In 2022, the country’s mining sector
ranked sixth overall for global mineral production volume.
Despite this, however, the sector faces numerous challenges at the
dawn of the critical minerals era, the Just Transition and aspirations
to achieve a net-zero global economy.
To contribute towards South Africa’s Economic Reconstruction
and Recovery Plan (ERRP) by securing a minimum of 5% of
the global exploration expenditure by applying geoscience
information and knowledge, the Council for Geoscience (CGS) is
in its sixth year of executing its Integrated and Multidisciplinary
Geoscience Mapping Programme (IMMP). The IMMP aims to
generate high-resolution integrated geoscience maps across the
country at different scales and to maintain an impactful delivery
of the core mandate of the CGS.
The programme was conceived to provide innovative and
responsive geoscience solutions to support the National
Development Plan 2030 and to contribute to, inter alia, economic
growth, employment and job creation. The geoscience information
collected is utilised to delineate geological formations and features
that may enhance our understanding of a few earth processes,
mineral and energy resources distribution, groundwater, land
use, infrastructure, geohazards and geo-environmental pollutionrelated
matters.
The IMMP addresses four core themes in response
to the national development imperatives
for the geosciences. These are:
• Economic growth (geosciences for mineral and energy resources,
infrastructure and land use)
• Environmental health (geosciences for infrastructure and land use,
health, groundwater and the environment)
• Innovation (geosciences collaboration with other institutions)
• International relations (geoscience diplomacy).
Under the “Geoscience for mineral and energy resources” theme,
the CGS collects, analyses and processes high-quality geological,
geochemical, geophysical and mineral data, which will lower
risks, while increasing confidence in exploration and mining,
particularly in areas that remain underexplored. A priority of this
programme, and a cornerstone of the CGS, is multidisciplinary
onshore geoscience mapping at a greater level of detail (e.g. 1:50
000 scale) focussed on providing data to serve as a base to advise
the state and various other stakeholders, including the public, in
support of economic recovery projects in the country.
1:50 000 published map coverage in 2017 (top) prior to the
implementation of the IMMP, compared to coverage as of 2023.
With a primary focus both on emerging critical minerals and
base and precious metals, coal and industrial minerals (eg
aggregate), the onshore geoscience mapping programme
has achieved a significant increase in countrywide coverage,
from below 5% prior to the commencement of the IMMP in
2017, to 12% at the end of the 2022–2023 financial year. This
increase relates to 230 out of a total of 1 916 1:50 000-scale
maps having been published. For 2023–2024 the CGS has
an ambitious plan to increase annual map publication to 80
maps, which will increase the total national coverage to 16%.
Once published, the geoscience data is made available on the
CGS portal which ensures that geological information is easily
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