Sonangol is seeking stakes and footprints in the development of critical minerals domestically, Sebastiao Gaspar Martins, the chief executive of Angola’s state-held oil company, has said.
Sonangol on Wednesday reported slightly lower net profit for 2025 compared to 2024, but the company wants to capitalize on the critical minerals momentum.
Sonangol has seven concessions for lithium, uranium, ?and quartz exploration, Gaspar Martins said, as carried by Reuters.
“Sonangol wants to diversify into (critical minerals essential for ?the) energy transition, … (It) will be very useful for us to also have a stake and ?a presence in the development of these minerals,” the executive said at the presentation of the 2025 earnings.
At the end of last year, Angola’s Minerals and Petroleum Minister, Diamantino Azevedo, called on the mining industry regulators to accelerate the permitting phase of new projects as one of Africa’s top oil producers looks to attract investments in critical minerals mining.
Azevedo said that the country needs to attract greater investment, support small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and closely monitor projects that are not in the production phase yet.
Angola is rich in mineral resources including manganese, copper, gold, phosphates, granite, marble, uranium, quartz, lead, zinc, wolfram, tin, fluorite, sulfur, feldspar, kaolin, mica, asphalt, gypsum, and talc, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration.
In October 2025, Angola launched production at its first major copper mine, Tetelo, as the country looks to diversify in critical minerals.
The developer of the project, Shining Star Icarus, a partnership between China’s Shining Star International Group and Angola’s Sociedade Mineira de Cobre de Angola, expects to produce around 25,000 metric tons of copper concentrate per year during its initial phase. The project is worth $305 million in investment, Angola’s government said.
While looking to diversify in critical minerals, Angola also seeks to reinvigorate its oil production that has stagnated in recent years due to a lack of investment.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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