A mining cadastre portal is the public, online face of a country’s mineral rights register: the official record of every prospecting, exploration and mining licence, where its boundary sits, who holds it, and whether it is active, pending or expired. For anyone who wants to acquire ground, it is the first stop. Before you commission a survey, sign a joint venture or pay an application fee, the cadastre tells you whether the area is even available.

Try it: cadastre cell counter for your licence block →

The trouble is that every country’s portal looks different, lives at a different address, and splits “public” and “signed-in” features in its own way. Some let you apply, pay and renew entirely online. Others only publish a map, and you still file paper at a cadastre office. A few are halfway through a migration. We have pulled that together country by country, with the official addresses and the steps you will actually go through.

“Ghana’s Minerals Commission stopped accepting paper applications: every new or renewal application goes through its online repository.”

What a mining cadastre portal is, and why it matters before you apply

In mining law, a cadastre (also spelled cadaster) is the register that ties each mineral right to a defined piece of ground. The World Bank’s paper on mineral rights cadastres describes the job in plain terms: capture applications, check them for overlaps against existing rights, advise on whether they are admissible, make sure fees are paid, record applications in the order they arrive, and keep the maps and registries open to the public. The online portal is that register made visible and, more and more often, transactional. Which title you apply for through it is a separate question, covered in our overview of mining licence types, fees and applications.

Why does the order of arrival matter so much? Because in most jurisdictions mineral rights are allocated first-come, first-served. Nigeria’s cadastre office says so in its FAQ, and the same principle runs through most African mining codes. If two applicants want the same block, the one whose complete application is recorded first usually wins. That makes an accurate, current mining cadastre map the only reliable way to know whether you are applying for open ground or paying a fee for an area someone else already holds.

Who runs each mining cadastre portal?

The licensing authority runs the portal: a mining commission, a cadastre office or a ministry department. The software underneath usually comes from one of a handful of vendors, which is why portals in very different countries often look alike.

• Landfolio / FlexiCadastre (Spatial Dimension). Its owner says the platform has been deployed at more than 30 government agencies for cadastre and registry work. Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Zambia, Botswana, the DRC, Namibia, Mozambique and Malawi all use it for public maps or full e-government portals. The vendor was part of Trimble for several years and was sold to acQuire in 2023, which is why many portals still carry “Trimble Landfolio” in their page titles.
• MCAS + Online Repository (Revenue Development Foundation): used by Ghana, Sierra Leone and Liberia. It publishes licences and related payments, and in Ghana and Liberia it also takes applications.
• eMC+ (GAF AG): runs Nigeria’s online mining cadastre.
• Indwe Mining Licensing System: South Africa’s replacement cadastre, built by the PMG Consortium and piloted province by province alongside the older SAMRAD system.

What you can do without signing in, and what needs an account

Almost every mining cadastre portal has two layers. The public layer is open to anyone and is where most people start. The signed-in layer is for applicants and licence holders, and it is where the transactions happen. Plenty of people search for a way to sign in when everything they actually need is sitting on the public map, so work out which layer you need first.

The public layer (no login)

• View the cadastre map: licence boundaries over a basemap, usually colour-coded by licence type and status.
• Search licences by licence number, holder or company name, commodity, or by drawing or entering coordinates (Mozambique’s portal supports all four).
• Read licence details such as holder, grant and expiry dates, area and commodity (Malawi’s public map shows all of these).
• See payments. The RDF repositories in Ghana, Sierra Leone and Liberia publish fees paid against each licence, which investors find useful.
• Download forms and guidance: application checklists, fee schedules and FAQs.

The signed-in layer (account required)

• Lodge applications: select the area, attach documents and submit.
• Pay fees: application fees, annual rents and in some countries royalties, online or by uploading a bank slip.
• Manage existing licences: renewals, transfers, surrenders, contact updates and statutory reporting.
• ⚠ Account verification is rarely instant. Kenya, Uganda and Zambia let first-time applicants self-register online, then a ministry officer verifies the account. Kenya’s portal help pages ask existing licence holders to register in person so their old licences can be linked to the account, and Uganda does the same.

How to apply on a mining cadastre portal: the common 7-step workflow

The details differ, but the sequence is remarkably consistent. It follows the model in the World Bank’s cadastre guidance and shows up in the Zambian, Kenyan and Nigerian portal documentation.

Step 1: register and verify your mining cadastre portal account

Expect to provide identity documents for individuals and incorporation papers for companies, plus a letter of authority if an agent or lawyer is filing for you. Zambia’s self-service system sends an email verification and then waits for a Ministry representative to authorise the account. Kenya asks first-time applicants to upload ID and authority letters for Ministry verification. Budget a few working days.

Step 2: select the area

Most modern cadastres use a fixed grid. You don’t draw a free-hand polygon; you pick cells, and the licence is made up of whole cells. Nigeria’s cadastral unit is 450 m × 450 m, roughly 20.25 hectares. Ghana’s licensing regulations use a 21-hectare cadastral unit. Under Zambia’s 2016 regulations the unit was six by six seconds of latitude and longitude, which works out at a little over 3 hectares near Lusaka. Other portals accept boundary coordinates. Either way, your coordinates must be in the datum and format the portal expects, or the boundary lands in the wrong place.

Because the grid only sells whole cells, the area you pay for is always a little bigger than the area you drew. The counter below shows how many cells a block takes on each grid, and whether it breaches the size caps the Nigerian and Ghanaian rules set for an exploration or prospecting title.

Step 3: check availability and overlaps

The mining cadastre portal compares your area against existing licences, pending applications and restricted zones such as protected areas or reserved state blocks. Some systems do this automatically as you draw. Others, like Nigeria’s, recommend a formal availability check with the cadastre office. Sierra Leone’s Mining Cadastre Office offers area-availability and overlap checks before you apply.

Step 4: submit and pay

Payment methods vary. Nigeria uses a Remita payment reference code. Liberia added online payments in December 2025, according to the Revenue Development Foundation, which built its repository. Zambia takes an uploaded bank deposit slip, and moved its cadastre onto the Government Service Bus in February 2025 to add card and mobile-money payment. Keep every receipt. The time your application is recorded often depends on the payment clearing.

Steps 5 to 7: ranking, review and grant

Once complete, the application is time-stamped and ranked. The cadastre checks technical admissibility (correct area, no overlaps, fees paid) and passes it to the licensing authority, which checks eligibility and decides. After a grant, the same account is where you pay annual rent, file reports and apply for renewal. Liberia’s ministry warned that licences which expired between May and November 2025 without a renewal application were deemed rejected. The portal is also where you keep a licence alive.

If you already hold ground, or have a boundary you are about to apply for, you can get a satellite read on it in parallel with the paperwork. Draw it on mining.farmonaut.com (Map Your Mining Site), or send the coordinates through our mining query form.

Mining cadastre portals by country: the directory

The move online took more than a decade, and it happened in steps. Tanzania’s portal launched in 2012 with about 67,000 licence records, and Sierra Leone put its first licence repository online the same year. Ghana followed with its online repository in July 2016, then stopped accepting paper on 1 November 2021. Nigeria’s eMC+ system went live in November 2022, and Zambia ended manual applications on 18 December 2023. South Africa’s Indwe pilot registered its first 37 rightholders in the Western Cape in October 2025.

The table lists the official mining cadastre portal for each country, the authority that runs it, and whether you can apply online or only search. Every address was checked in September 2026. Government sites move, so if a link fails, go through the licensing authority’s main website rather than a third-party copy.

East Africa: Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda

Tanzania mining cadastre portal

Tanzania’s online mining cadastre is at portal.madini.go.tz, run under the Mining Commission (Tume ya Madini), with a public map at the portal’s Public Map page. At its 2012 launch it already held around 67,000 licence records. Registered users can lodge applications, review their licences, submit performance information and pay licence fees and royalties online. The Mining Commission’s application procedure says applications can be submitted online and/or as hard copies, and that the area applied for must be free of existing licences.

• Licence types: Prospecting Licence (PL), Primary Mining Licence (PML), Mining Licence (ML), Special Mining Licence (SML), plus processing, smelting, refinery, broker’s and dealer’s licences.
• Law: Mining Act, Cap. 123.
• ⚠ Sign-in: guidance from 2015 required portal access to be registered in person at Mining Commission offices. Confirm the rule with your zonal mining office before you rely on self-registration.

Kenya mining cadastre portal

Kenya’s portal is portal.miningcadastre.go.ke, run by the Ministry of Mining’s Mining Cadastre Office in Nairobi. The embedded public map shows licences, applications and mineral dealings. According to the Ministry’s FAQ, applications are made online once you are registered. First-time applicants self-register and upload ID and letters of authority for verification. Existing licence holders register in person using form MCP01. Rent, deadlines and every Kenyan title are set out in our Kenya cadastre fees and deadlines guide.

• Licence types under the Mining Act, 2016: Reconnaissance, Prospecting and Retention Licences, and a large-scale Mining Licence. Small-scale operators use Reconnaissance, Prospecting and Mining Permits. Mineral dealing licences and permits sit alongside these.
• Fees listed in the Ministry FAQ when we checked in September 2026: Mining Licence application KShs 50,000 plus rent of KShs 2,000 per hectare per year (minimum KShs 500,000). Mining Permit application KShs 1,000 plus KShs 10,000 per year. The FAQ is where a revised schedule would appear, so check it before paying.
• ⚠ Deadline: the FAQ allows 90 days to complete an application.

Uganda mining cadastre portal

Uganda’s cadastre, the Mining Cadastre and Registry System, is at dgsmportal.minerals.go.ug, run by the Directorate of Geological Survey and Mines. The public side offers the cadastre map, how-to-apply FAQs, downloadable forms and a list of active dealer and refining licences. Signed-in users can apply, renew, pay, submit reports, and request transfers or surrenders. As in Kenya, first-time applicants self-register online and existing holders register in person.

• Licence types under the Mining and Minerals Act, 2022: Prospecting, Exploration and Retention Licences, and Large-, Medium- and Small-Scale Mining Licences. Artisanal Mining Licences, mineral dealer’s licences and refining/beneficiation licences complete the list.
• ⚠ Watch for portal forms that still use pre-2022 licence names such as the old mining lease. The 2022 Act replaced the mining lease with the scale-based licences above.

Rwanda

The Rwanda Mines, Petroleum and Gas Board (RMB) runs licensing through a digital mining cadastre system, which you reach from the licensing section of rmb.gov.rw. It covers mining and quarry licence applications, renewals and transfers, fee payments and reporting. Law No. 072/2024 on mining and quarry operations sets out exploration, small-, medium- and large-scale mining, mineral trading, processing and quarry licences.

Southern and Central Africa: Zambia, Botswana, DRC, Namibia, Mozambique, Malawi, South Africa and Zimbabwe

Zambia mining cadastre portal

Zambia has gone furthest towards a fully online process. Manual mining licence applications stopped on 18 December 2023, and every application goes through the Self-Service Online Mining Cadastre System at portal.miningcadastre.com. A separate public map runs at portals.landfolio.com/zambia. Applicants upload documents and coordinates, the system validates the application and spatial data, and payment is by bank deposit slip or through the Government Service Bus, which adds card and mobile-money options. Accounts are email-verified and then authorised by a Ministry representative.

• Licence types have included Exploration Licences, Large- and Small-Scale Mining Licences, Prospecting Permits, Small-Scale Gemstone Licences and Artisanal Mining Rights.
• ⚠ Law in transition: the Minerals Regulation Commission Act, 2024 and the Geological and Minerals Development Act (in force from June 2025) replaced the Mines and Minerals Development Act, 2015. Check licence names and fees under the 2024 and 2025 laws before you apply.

Botswana mining cadastre portal

Botswana’s Department of Mines runs portal.miningcadastre.gov.bw, with a public map viewer. Signed-in users can submit and manage licence applications, manage company or syndicate representations, report production, transfer ownership and request inspections. The main instruments under the Mines and Minerals Act (Cap. 66:01) are the Prospecting Licence, Retention Licence, Mining Licence and Minerals Permit.

DR Congo mining cadastre portal (CAMI)

In the DRC, the Cadastre Minier (CAMI) publishes a public map of the national mining domain at drclicences.cami.cd. Use the https address; the older http version tends to time out. CAMI’s main site at cami.cd adds a map of mineral occurrences, published decisions and application forms. Applications are filed with CAMI under its published filing conditions, which include fees, a company registration (RCCM) and identity documents. We could not confirm a fully online application route.

• Titles under the Mining Code (Law No. 18/001 of 2018): Permis de Recherches (exploration), Permis d’Exploitation (mining), Permis d’Exploitation de Petite Mine (small mine), Permis d’Exploitation de Rejets (tailings), and quarry authorisations.

Namibia, Mozambique and Malawi

All three publish public cadastre maps on the Landfolio platform: portals.landfolio.com/namibia, portals.landfolio.com/mozambique (English and Portuguese) and portals.landfolio.com/malawi. Mozambique’s map can be searched by licence number, company name or coordinates. Malawi’s shows holder, grant and expiry dates, commodity, area and status for each licence.

• Namibia (Minerals (Prospecting and Mining) Act, 1992): Non-Exclusive Prospecting Licence, Mining Claim, Reconnaissance Licence, Exclusive Prospecting Licence (EPL), Mineral Deposit Retention Licence and Mining Licence. The ministry handles applications through its FlexiCadastre-based e-services.
• Mozambique (Mining Law 20/2014): Prospecting and Research Licence, Mining Concession, Mining Certificate and Mining Pass, plus processing and trading licences. The cadastre has been closed temporarily at times, so check that it is open before planning a filing.
• Malawi (Mines and Minerals Act, 2023): reconnaissance, exploration, retention and large-scale mining licences, plus artisanal permits.

South Africa: SAMRAD and the Indwe licensing system

South Africa is in transition. Prospecting and mining right and permit applications have long gone through the SAMRAD online system of the Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources (formerly the DMRE), reached from the department’s Online Systems page. SAMRAD’s public information is limited, but it shows whether rights already exist over an area. The replacement Mining Licensing System (Project Indwe) adds a map viewer and applications on a digital grid with online payment. It started in the Western Cape, where the first 37 rightholders were registered in October 2025, with the Eastern Cape next. Applicants outside the pilot provinces were still using SAMRAD when we checked in September 2026.

• Main instruments under the MPRDA (Act 28 of 2002): Prospecting Right, Mining Right, and Mining Permit (up to 1.5 hectares, for up to two years at a time). The South African rights and permits guide covers terms, requirements and DMPR offices.

Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe had no public online cadastre when we checked in September 2026. The Ministry of Mines and Mining Development has been rolling out a computerised Mining Cadastre Registration System, which the minister told Cabinet in July 2026 covers more than 60,000 titles, and title holders were told in July 2025 to submit survey-grade coordinates for their claims. Until the portal opens, searches and applications go through the Ministry’s mining offices. The main titles are blocks of claims, special grants, mining leases and Exclusive Prospecting Orders.

“Zimbabwe’s cadastre is being built to hold more than 60,000 mining titles, each needing survey-grade coordinates.”

West Africa and beyond: Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guyana

Ghana Minerals Commission online repository

Ghana’s Minerals Commission runs a public mining cadastre portal, map and licence repository at miningrepository.mincom.gov.gh. It shows mineral rights and the payments made against them (our Minerals Commission Ghana licensing guide walks through each licence and its timeline). Every application has been online since 1 November 2021, and paper is refused. After signing in through the Commission’s single sign-on, you can file first-time and renewal applications for large- and small-scale mineral rights, register mine support services, request cartographic and legal searches, and file reports and statutory returns.

• Licence types under the Minerals and Mining Act, 2006 (Act 703) and the 2012 Licensing Regulations: Reconnaissance Licence, Prospecting Licence, Mining Lease, Restricted Mining Lease (industrial minerals), and Small-Scale Mining Licence (reserved for Ghanaians).
• ⚠ Old links: the Commission’s former cadastre address returns an error. Use the repository address above or the Commission’s main site.

Nigeria Mining Cadastre Office (eMC+)

Nigeria’s online cadastre launched in November 2022 and runs at nigeriaminingcadastre.gov.ng/eMC on GAF’s eMC+ system. You register, fill in the application, upload documents, submit and track processing online. Fees are paid through Remita using a payment reference code. Titles are granted first-come, first-served, and areas are built from cadastral units of 450 m × 450 m; our Nigerian mineral title and eMC+ filing guide has the fee table. For a formal availability check, the cadastre office asks you to bring coordinates to one of its offices.

• Titles under the Nigerian Minerals and Mining Act, 2007 and the 2011 Regulations: Reconnaissance Permit, Exploration Licence (up to 200 km²), Small-Scale Mining Lease (up to 3 km²), Quarry Lease (up to 5 km²), Mining Lease (up to 50 km²) and Water Use Permit.
• Processing fees on the office’s apply-now page when we checked in September 2026: Exploration Licence NGN 500,000 for the first 100 cadastral units, and Mining Lease NGN 3,000,000. That page is where changes would show up, so confirm the amounts before you pay.
• ⚠ Uptime: the portal can be intermittent. If it times out, try again later rather than switching to an unofficial mirror.

Sierra Leone: National Minerals Agency

Sierra Leone’s National Minerals Agency publishes its licences (large-scale exploration and mining, small-scale, artisanal, dealer and exporter) with holders and payments on the online repository at sierraleone.revenuedev.org, updated from its cadastre system. Registered users can check the status of applications and licences. Applications themselves go to the NMA’s Mining Cadastre Office, which offers area-availability and overlap checks, and payments go through the National Revenue Authority. The governing law is the Mines and Minerals Development Act, 2022.

Liberia: Ministry of Mines and Energy

Liberia’s repository at portal.mme.gov.lr maps all issued mineral rights and related payments. All applications must go through its application platform, and online payments were added in December 2025. Under the Minerals and Mining Law, 2000, the tiers are Reconnaissance, Prospecting and Exploration Licences and Class A (large-scale), Class B (small-scale industrial) and Class C (artisanal) Mining Licences. The older Landfolio concessions map redirects to a maintenance page, so use the ministry portal.

Guyana: GGMC eServices

Guyana works differently. The Guyana Geology and Mines Commission publishes an interactive Mineral Tenure map (medium- and large-scale tenure) on its website, and handles transactions (new permits and licences, renewals, claim rentals and management of prospecting licences and mining permits) through eservices.ggmc.gov.gy. Tenure GIS data can also be bought from GGMC’s Land Management Division. The governing law is the Mining Act, 1989. For the permit scales, forms and per-acre rents, see our GGMC permits and fees guide.

Other countries with public cadastre portals

The Landfolio vendor also lists public mining or concession portals for Angola, Cameroon, Ethiopia (our Ethiopian mining licence guide covers who issues what), Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire, Mauritania, Senegal, South Sudan, Togo, Papua New Guinea and the Dominican Republic. If your country’s mining cadastre portal is not profiled above, the vendor’s public portal list is a useful index. Always follow through to the licensing authority’s own site before you file anything.

Before you apply: make sure the ground is worth the fees

A mining cadastre portal tells you the ground is available. It cannot tell you whether it is prospective, and that gap is expensive. Application fees, annual rent per hectare and minimum work obligations start the moment a licence is granted. In first-come, first-served systems applicants often rush to file on ground they know little about, and end up with a licence that costs money every year and never justifies a drill rig.

Satellite analysis fits between step 3 and step 4 of the cadastre workflow. Once you have confirmed an open area, you already have what we need: a boundary. Our satellite-based mineral detection analyses multispectral and hyperspectral imagery of that polygon. Each mineral and alteration zone reflects energy in its own spectral signature, and we use that to flag likely mineralised target zones, alteration halos and structures such as faults and fractures, without anyone setting foot on the ground.

• ✔ Input you already have: the coordinates, KML/KMZ or polygon you prepared for the cadastre application, plus the country and target mineral.
• Speed: reports are delivered in 5–20 business days depending on area size and mineral complexity, which can fit inside the window many applicants have before committing to fees.
• Deliverables: prospectivity heatmaps, high-potential zones with estimated location and depth ranges, geological interpretation, and PDF plus georeferenced GIS files. Premium+ adds TargetMax™ drilling intelligence and 3D subsurface models.
• Cost: satellite screening can cut early-exploration costs by up to 80–85% and shorten timelines from months to days, compared with starting on the ground.
• ⚠ Limitation: satellite targets are exploration targets, not a resource estimate. They tell you where to sample and drill first, and field work confirms them.

The satellite-driven 3D mineral prospectivity mapping overview shows what a typical deliverable looks like. We have scanned 100,000+ hectares for 20+ mineral types across 25+ countries in Africa, the Americas, Asia and Australia.

A practical pre-application checklist

1. Register your mining cadastre portal account early and wait for verification before you need to file.
2. Search the public mining cadastre map for the area, and record licence numbers of any neighbours.
3. Run the official availability check through the portal or the cadastre office, and save a dated copy.
4. Prepare the boundary in the portal’s grid or coordinate format and datum.
5. Screen the area’s prospectivity using the same boundary, so you apply for the best cells, not simply the open ones.
6. Budget beyond the application fee: annual rent per hectare, minimum work obligations, reporting and renewal. Our side-by-side of exploration licence rent and minimum spend shows how far these vary.
7. Submit complete. In first-come, first-served systems, an incomplete application can lose its place in the queue.

Country guides that go further

Several countries on this page have their own detailed guide:

• Ghana: the five mineral rights, block limits and fees, from reconnaissance licence to mining lease.
• Kenya: portal registration, rents and the 90-day deadline under the Mining Act, 2016.
• Nigeria: titles, cadastral units and eMC+ payments through the Mining Cadastre Office.
• Tanzania: licence classes, application steps and royalties on the Tume ya Madini portal.
• Zambia: how the self-service cadastre handles licences and fees since manual filing ended.
• Ethiopia: which ministry licenses what, and where the gold and lithium ground is.
• Artisanal and small-scale permits across several countries: plot caps, terms and who qualifies.

Frequently asked questions

Reviewed September 2026 against the World Bank’s Mineral Rights Cadastre paper, Kenya’s Ministry of Mining FAQ and cadastre help pages, the Nigeria Mining Cadastre Office FAQ and apply-now page, Ghana Minerals Commission notices, ZamPortal and Zambia’s Ministry of Mines, CAMI’s filing conditions, the DMPR Online Systems page and each portal listed in the directory.

Portal addresses, licence types and fees in this guide come from each licensing authority’s own website, portal help pages and published guidance, and from the World Bank’s mineral rights cadastre guidance. Government systems, fees and licence names change, especially where a mining law is being replaced (Zambia, Uganda, South Africa, Zimbabwe), so always confirm with the licensing authority before you file or pay. Nothing here is legal advice.