Tsodilo Resources confirms full rare earth suite at Botswana project

Tsodilo Resources said in late February 2026 that diamond core drilling at its wholly owned Gcwihaba Metals project in north-west Botswana has confirmed the presence of all 15 rare earth elements listed on the United States Geological Survey's 2025 Critical Minerals List. The mineralisation, found at two zones the company calls C26 and C27, sits between 20 and 50 metres below surface, a depth shallow enough to keep future mining costs relatively low if the discovery is confirmed at scale.

More than just rare earths

The skarn-hosted system also carries cobalt, copper, nickel, silver and vanadium, a metal suite increasingly in demand for batteries, magnets and grid infrastructure as much as for the rare earth elements themselves. Tsodilo has framed Gcwihaba as a polymetallic critical-minerals discovery rather than a single-commodity rare earth play, which broadens the project's potential customer base beyond magnet makers to include battery and steel-alloy producers.

Why it matters

Botswana is best known internationally for diamonds, and a verified rare earth and critical-minerals discovery would represent a significant diversification of the country's mining pipeline at a time when Western governments are actively courting African suppliers of minerals used in wind turbines, electric motors and defence applications, partly to reduce reliance on Chinese supply chains. For Tsodilo, a junior explorer, the finding provides a fresh narrative to support further fundraising and a larger follow-up drilling campaign.

What happens next

The company has outlined a 15,000-metre drilling programme for 2026 aimed at testing the extent of mineralisation at Gcwihaba and gathering enough data to support an initial mineral resource estimate. Until that resource is published, the scale of the discovery remains unquantified, and Tsodilo's next material catalyst will be whether follow-up drilling confirms grades and widths sufficient to justify further development spending.

Sources

• Mining Weekly: Tsodilo detects critical minerals, rare earth elements at Botswana project, 13 Jan 2026
• Investing News Network: Tsodilo Resources Detects Critical Minerals and Rare Earth Elements Within Its Skarn Metals Project, 24 Feb 2026

Photo: Aerial view of the Okavango region of north-west Botswana. Diego Delso, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.