JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Zambia’s South Africa-developed mining cadastre licensing system portals have been reactivated, the Ministry of Mines and Mineral Development has confirmed.

“The disruption was due to the expiration of contractual obligations with Spatial Dimension, the South Africa-based system developer. The Ministry has taken interim measures to reopen the platform while finalising contractual arrangements to ensure the system's continued management,” Ministry principal public relations officer Shamwinda Tembo has stated in a release accessed by Mining Weekly.

Clients can now access all services provided by the mining cadastre department through the mining cadastre map portal https://portals.landfolio.com/Zambia/ and the online transactional portal https://portal.miningcadastre.com.

However, some are still querying the lack of reference to the ‘must be hosted in Zambia’ requirement, which was said to be mandatory under data privacy law. The implementation of this resulted in the temporary ousting of the Trimble Landfolio System – the Spatial Dimension system.

A screenshot of Spatial Dimension’s notice stated: “After almost two decades of supporting the Zambian mining cadastre, Spatial Dimension no longer has the contractual ability to provide access to the service.”

A subsequent notice was then put out by Spatial Dimension to explain that “This system is not available at the present time. Please contact the Ministry of Mines and Mineral Development for more information.”

No insight has been provided into First Mining DRC-Zambia’s report that the locally hosted ZIMIS system was intended to accelerate the issuance of mining rights, supporting the nation’s ambition to hit 3.1-million tonnes of annual copper production by 2031. However, within weeks of launch, the Ministry issued a March 17 press release confirming that ZIMIS had suffered technical challenges, the publication stated.

Meanwhile, hopes are high that the initial launch of South Africa’s own new cadastre system in the Western Cape on July 1 will be successful amid concern about the introduction of grids, which some fear may make insight difficult.

In an update on the introduction of the absolutely essential but extremely long-awaited South African cadastral system, Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources deputy director-general Tseliso Maqubela disclosed that the department had once again found itself at risk of repeating what had taken place with the introduction of the troublesome prior mining licensing system on 1 October 2013, which is now a business school case study on how not to roll out a project owing to its collapse soon after being launched.

On the way now is avoidance of introducing the new cadastre all at once nationally. Instead the new licensing system is going to be implemented regionally. “There won’t be one roll out nationwide,” Maqubela revealed.

“We’ve decided that we’ll start with the Western Cape. We’re still targeting completion in June 2025, as we had committed,” said Maqubela on the grounds that the Western Cape was a manageable jurisdiction with the highest number of operational mines, no backlog and a limited number of outstanding appeals.

“So, we’ll be able to test the efficacy of the system using that jurisdiction, which will soon be followed by Eastern Cape, and then all the other regions will follow after that.

“We know that there are regions with complexity that we're going to have to deal with, and we don't want any comebacks, so currently we're doing data migration, particularly for the region where we're going to start validation of that data, making sure that it is audited.

“Come the 1st of July, you won't be able to use Samrad to apply in the Western Cape, you will have to apply using the new cadastral system.

“One key feature is that we've introduced what is called a grid, and when you click on the grid and you say, I want to apply here, it will either give you a red that means you can't apply there, or it will give you a yellow to say that you need to have some conversations with people because you may be encroaching, and then the green will allow you to submit your application.

“The size of the grid is going to be a hectare, so you can expand the grid as much as you want, so what I can say is that we’re on track to deliver a robust, transparent and efficient cadastral system.

“We are resolving challenges as they emerge and when we launch, we’d like to get feedback so that we can make the necessary adjustments,” Maqubela added.

The grid framework replaces the long-standing farm-boundary framework.

In a video played to provide an overview of what was described as the new South Africa mining licensing system, logging in came with a personal dashboard, and the steps involved in the application process were indicated at the top of what was described as the application page.