During the conference of the Southern African Geophysical Association (SAGA) in Windhoek, a team of Namibian students from the University of Namibia (UNAM) and Namibia University of Science and Technology (NUST) working and/or undertaking an internship at the Geological Survey of Namibia (GSN) received the Frank Arnott Next Generation Explorers Award (NGEA™) Africa.

NGEA is an international competition where teams of earth science university students collaborate and innovate to transform geoscience datasets into their interpretation of the subsurface geology and mineralisation targets.

The Namibian team, comprising Elkan Utoni, Emilie Kasiona, Faith Uupindi, and Carin-Bibi Muchila, is working within a technical cooperation project between the Geological Survey of Namibia (GSN) and the German Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR). The BGR technical cooperation project is funded with 2.4 million Euro (i.e. about 46 million N$) by the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.

One of the projects activities is the mineral prospectivity mapping of the entire Kunene region. The results of this initiative will be made publicly available, supporting investment in Namibia’s mineral resource sector.

The young Namibian award winners presented their work on mineral potential of sedimentary rock-hosted stratiform copper in an area within the Kunene Region. Their approach combined cutting-edge techniques to integrate multiple data sets, successfully identifying mineral potential in the region.