Geological Maps: Key to Securing Critical Minerals Supply Chains

As the US scrambles to secure supplies of critical minerals, only 25% of the country is sufficiently mapped for mining exploration—and geological mapping percentages for many emerging markets are much lower.  Poor or minimal geological maps across Africa, Latin America, and Central Asia pose a key obstacle to developing Western minerals supply chains.  Without accurate maps of mineral deposits, Western miners face exceptional costs and risks even before confronting issues such as corruption or poor infrastructure. While media coverage of Western mining investments in emerging markets typically focuses on political risk, the problem of geological mapping poses a vast but rarely discussed challenge.

Mining companies rely heavily on geological maps for drilling—a crucial component of mining exploration that takes up to 40% of a project’s exploration costs. Without maps, companies are forced to rely on “blind” drilling, a risky and often prohibitively expensive process. For US mining firms, especially larger, publicly traded companies with risk-averse shareholders, the lack of geological data in emerging markets is a primary obstacle.

Ukraine, which holds approximately 5 percent of the world’s critical materials, relies on 30–60-year-old Soviet era geological maps.  Similarly, only 20% of the DRC—which supplies over 70% of the world’s cobalt—is geologically mapped, and much existing data is over 70 years old. In 2024, investors spent significantly more on mining exploration in Australia and Canada than in the entirety of the African continent, reflecting the impact of Africa’s geological mapping shortage. While AI-driven tools aggregating geophysical and satellite data create promising alternatives to traditional mapmaking methods, their high cost makes them available to only the most highly capitalized firms, such as the Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos-backed KoBold Metals.

An Instructive Case: Copper Mining

Crucially, increased mapping of emerging minerals markets can assist in reorienting mining from its risk-averse focus on mergers and acquisitions and towards exploring untapped critical minerals deposits—reversing mining exploration’s steady decline since 2012. Despite massive projected demand increases for minerals such as copper, much of the industry growth driven by recent interest in critical minerals has been channeled into acquisitions of existing assets, reflecting exploration’s capital-intensive nature and accentuating future mineral scarcity risks.  This problem is especially acute in Africa, whose share of global mining exploration spending has fallen from 16% in 2004 to 10.4% in 2024.

For example, commodities price reporting agency S&P Global Commodities predicts that copper’s projected 50% demand increase to 42 million annual metric tons by 2040 will result in a 10-million-ton supply deficit, 25% below global demand. Copper’s projected peak production at 33 million tons in 2030 will be unable to satisfy skyrocketing supply needs from global electricity—for which demand will increase 50% by 2040—as well as from AI data centers.

Currently, the average copper mine takes 17 years to progress from discovery to production, and 31.8 years in the US. Despite projected demand increase, only 17 of 258 major copper discoveries between 1990 and 2024 have entered construction; of all copper deposits found in the last 35 years, only 5 percent were discovered in the last decade.  These dire statistics heavily reflect investor hesitancy over mining’s capital intensive nature and long timeline for investment returns—a factor that can be alleviated by accelerating project timelines and assuaging investor concerns through increased mapping of regions targeted by mining firms for exploration. Geological mapping initiatives can counteract the looming shortage of metals such as copper and spur greenfield investment.

Who Takes the Lead?

The US Geological Service (USGS) is well-positioned to address this critical roadblock through bilateral cooperation with governments of developing states and outreach to the private sector.  By facilitating increased geological mapping of emerging minerals markets, the USGS can build US and Western-aligned critical mineral supply chains by addressing a key source of investor hesitancy.

Multiple mineral-rich nations have expressed interest in partnering with the US to improve and expand their geological mapping processes or have signed agreements with the US featuring provisions for potential mapping support. Recent US agreements on critical minerals cooperation with Mexico, Japan, the UK and Australia already include provisions for collaboration on geological mapping.

Notably, the DRC’s government has expressed interest in hiring a US entity to complete its geological mapping process. While the DRC currently employs Spanish firm Xcalibur Smart Mapping to map its resources, most areas outside of the mineral-rich Katanga province remain unmapped. Similarly, Kazakhstan, whose uranium, tungsten and rare earth deposits have drawn US diplomatic interest, has announced the beginning of a major geological mapping initiative, providing the US an opportunity to advance its geoeconomic interests by providing assistance.

In the absence of US aid, resource-rich but cash-poor states are more likely to seek Chinese or Russian help in mineral mapping. China has poured resources into geological mapping programs across Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East—ranging from a $260 million program to map Saudi minerals to a $60 million loan to a massive effort at mapping one million square kilometers in Mongolia. In Latin America, this activity is concentrated in the strategic “lithium triangle” of Chile, Bolivia and Argentina, with examples including a $60 million Chinese loan to support Bolivia’s geological agency and ongoing Chinese-Argentine geological mapping cooperation. Similarly, Russia has extended offers of geological mapping assistance to Ethiopia, Mali, Niger, Sudan, and Equatorial Guinea.

A Way Forward

Multiple pathways exist for the USGS and other government agencies to address the commercial and diplomatic demand for geological mapping. USGS experts could be deployed as commercial attachés to US embassies to share technical expertise, advise on mapping efforts, broker host government partnerships with US mapping firms, and assist in concluding agreements to implement USGS mapping programs. The US State Department’s recent introduction of Commercial Services offices, first implemented at the US embassies in Zambia and Côte d’Ivoire in 2024, also offers another promising pathway to coordinate US government mapping initiatives abroad.

The USGS and State Department can also use these channels to coordinate with US allies such as Japan and South Korea to jointly advance mapping initiatives. Agencies of both countries—namely, the Japan Organization for Metals and Energy Security (JOGMEC) and the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources (KIGAM)—are extensively involved in geological mapping efforts. Examples include JOGMEC’s 2020 agreement with Botswana to conduct geological surveys and KIGAM’s mapping efforts in Central Asia, which most notably led to the 2024 discovery of major lithium reserves in Kazakhstan’s Bakeno concession.

Multiple current and previous USGS programs create strong precedents for USGS involvement in overseas mapping. In November 2023, the USGS signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Angola’s state-run Geological Institute to map copper, cobalt, lithium and manganese deposits. Following the MOU, Angola granted Canada-based Ivanhoe Mines major exploration rights, while the US Development Finance Corporation—a US government agency which plays a key role in US commercial diplomacy—granted UK-based firm Pensana $3.4 million to finance an Angolan rare earths project.

The joint US-Canada-Australia Critical Minerals Mapping Initiative also provides a potential roadmap for US-driven multilateral cooperation on mapping exploration. Under the Initiative, the USGS works with its counterparts, the Geological Survey of Canada and Geoscience Australia, to map and identify new sources of critical mineral supplies, develop modelling approaches for prospectivity analysis, and create a global database for critical mineral geochemistry. The Initiative is similar to the USGS’s Earth Mapping Resources Initiative, which partners with federal and state agencies as well as the private sector to modernize and accelerate domestic US geological mapping.

The USGS’s 2021-2023 project to evaluate potential rare earth deposits in eastern Botswana provides another precedent. The February 2026 discovery of a major Botswana rare earths deposit by Canada-based Tsolido Resources Limited indicates strong potential for discoveries based on further exploration.

The USGS already devotes major attention to mapping strategic overseas oil & gas deposits through the USGS World Energy Project: a wide-ranging, decades-old initiative aimed at geologically mapping global petroleum reserves. While the Project centers on estimating reserves rather than creating precise maps, its broad scope provides a potential bureaucratic model for similar global initiatives aimed at geologic mapping.

The US government has ample resources to boost Western mineral competitiveness. By expanding the USGS’ international role, the US can begin to match China’s pace of mineral expansion. Until then, mapping is likely to remain a dangerously neglected block in building Western mineral supply chains, hobbling the West’s ability to compete in crucial emerging markets.