Mfikeyi Makayi
CEO: KoBold Metals
‘We want many more Mingombas and we’re not limiting ourselves to Zambia’
KOBOLD Metals, the exploration firm backed by Silicon Valley heavyweights Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, is developing the $2bn Mingomba, a 300,000-tons-a-year copper project in Zambia. First production is expected from the 2030s assuming KoBold’s innovative combination of AI and traditional mineral exploration techniques bears fruit. The California outfit, which has raised more than $1bn to date, is also scouring for untapped reserves of battery metals in Namibia, not traditionally renowned for the minerals. “This is why we’re exploring,” Makayi told Bloomberg News last year.
But the most significant new development for KoBold in 2025 was the award by the Democratic Republic of Congo of exploration permits for lithium. The permit awards, the result of an agreement between US President Donald Trump and DRC President Félix Tshisekedi, includes a development agreement for the Roche Dure deposit at Manono in Tanganyika province. The project is, however, contested. Australia’s AVZ Minerals said in July the deal breached a 2024 international arbitration order issued by the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes which required the DRC to recognize AVZ’s subsidiary as the holder of the Manono licence.
The matter reflects the increasingly politicised nature of minerals acquisition which the Trump administration has made key to its front-foot approach to foreign affairs. KoBold is easily one of the best-capitalised mineral exploration businesses on earth, with about 60 projects on four continents. Makayi, appointed in April 2023, says the company is keen to add more.
LIFE OF MFIKEYI
Not many appointments carry presidential approval but that is what Makayi received when KoBold hired her in 2023. Makayi would play a critical role in achieving the country’s ambitions to increase copper output, said Hakainde Hichilema, Zambia’s leader. A civil engineer with a postgraduate degree in mining engineering from the UK’s Cambourne School of Mines, Makayi worked previously at First Quantum’s Kansanshi and in the firm’s global internal audit division covering Australia, Finland, Mauritania and Panama’s operations. Makayi also worked at South African yellow machinery supplier Barloworld.
