A team of Namibian students from the University of Namibia (UNAM) and the Namibia University of Science and Technology (NUST), currently undertaking internships at the Geological Survey of Namibia (GSN), has been awarded the Frank Arnott Next Generation Explorers Award (NGEA™) Africa.
The award was presented during the recent Southern African Geophysical Association (SAGA) conference in Windhoek.
The NGEA is an international competition where teams of earth science university students collaborate and innovate to transform geoscience datasets into interpretations of subsurface geology and mineralization targets.
The Namibian team—comprising Elkan Utoni, Emilie Kasiona, Faith Uupindi, and Carin-Bibi Muchila—is working within a technical cooperation project between the GSN and the German Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR).
The BGR project is funded by the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, with a budget of €2.4 million (approximately N$46 million).
One of the project’s key activities is mineral prospectivity mapping for 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 the mineral potential of sedimentary rock-hosted stratiform copper in an area within the Kunene Region.
Their approach used cutting-edge techniques to integrate multiple datasets, successfully identifying mineral potential in the region.
