Manganese exploration is the search for rock rich enough in manganese oxides or carbonates to be mined and sold as ore, typically 35% to 54% manganese once processed. Most of the world’s supply comes from ancient sedimentary basins, above all the Kalahari Manganese Field in South Africa, and from deposits upgraded by tropical weathering, as at Nsuta in Ghana. Knowing which kind of deposit your ground could host decides what you map, what you sample and how big a success could be.

Try it: Manganese ore value check: Mn units against the 44% benchmark →

The market context is set by steel. The USGS manganese summary notes that manganese consumption closely follows the steel industry and that the metal has no satisfactory substitute in its major applications. Global mine output rose in 2025 on a manganese-content basis, with South Africa, Gabon, Ghana and Australia the leading producers in that order. For the broader exploration sequence, see our complete guide to mineral exploration and our mining prospecting guide to deposit types and signs.

“South Africa accounts for an estimated 70% of the world’s manganese resources, according to the USGS.”

Where manganese is mined: the global picture

USGS estimates world mine production at about 20 million tonnes of contained manganese in 2025, up from 18.7 million in 2024. South Africa produced about 7.6 million tonnes, Gabon 5.0 million, Ghana 2.0 million and Australia 1.6 million. The United States has produced no manganese ore containing 20% or more manganese since 1970 and relies entirely on imports: for 2021 to 2024, Gabon supplied 64% of its manganese ore imports and South Africa 24%.

Why steel sets the manganese price

Almost every tonne of manganese ore ends up in iron and steel making, as ore charged to blast furnaces or as ferromanganese and silicomanganese alloys. The USGS ties manganese consumption closely to steel, and cites the World Steel Association’s estimate that global finished steel consumption was unchanged in 2025 compared with 2024. That flat demand, alongside rising supply from Gabon and Ghana, is the backdrop to the 2025 price fall shown later in this guide.

Non-steel uses are smaller but real. In the United States, the USGS lists manganese dioxide for pig iron manufacture, and other consumers using ore for animal feed, brick colorant, dry cell batteries and fertilisers. Battery chemistries get the headlines, yet for manganese exploration the practical buyer is still usually a steel mill or alloy smelter, and its specification is what an explorer has to meet.

• Metallurgical ore: sold to blast furnaces and alloy plants, priced per unit against a benchmark near 44% Mn.
• Alloys: ferromanganese typically contains 74% to 95% manganese, according to the USGS.
• Non-metallurgical ore: manganese dioxide, chemicals, feed, fertiliser and batteries, often with tighter impurity limits.

Reserves: a different ranking

Reserves tell a similar story with a twist. The USGS table gives Australia about 580 million tonnes of reserves (110 million tonnes JORC-compliant or equivalent) and South Africa 550 million, followed by Brazil at 300 million and China at 260 million. Gabon’s reserves are 61 million tonnes and Ghana’s 13 million. Land-based manganese resources are large but irregularly distributed, the USGS notes, and South Africa’s dominance is clearer in resources than in reserves.

How manganese deposits form: the three types explorers meet

Manganese is soluble in reduced water and precipitates when oxygen rises, which is why the big deposits record changes in ancient oceans and why weathering can move and concentrate it again near the surface. For exploration purposes most deposits fall into three groups.

Sedimentary deposits in ancient basins

The Kalahari Manganese Field is the type example. The IUGS geoheritage listing describes it as by far the largest land-based manganese deposit on Earth, about 2.2 billion years old, with three layers of manganese ore interbedded with banded iron formations and carbonates in the Hotazel Formation. A University of the Witwatersrand study adds that the field covers at least 1,100 km² in the Transvaal Supergroup and is covered by the younger Kalahari Formation of sand, calcrete, clay and pebble beds. Groote Eylandt in Australia is a much younger sedimentary example, formed in a Cretaceous sea.

Metamorphosed manganese formations upgraded by weathering

In West Africa’s Birimian greenstone belts, manganese carbonates and silicates were laid down in marine basins about 2.1 billion years ago, metamorphosed, then enriched by tropical weathering. The University of Basel study of the Nsuta deposit describes manganese-enriched marbles and carbonate phyllites as the protores, later upgraded to minable ores by supergene weathering.

Hydrothermal and supergene upgrading

Fluids and weathering can both lift grade. In the Kalahari field, the IUGS listing distinguishes primary sedimentary Mamatwan-type ore at about 38% manganese from Wessels-type ore at about 45%, formed roughly a billion years later. The Wits study describes the three ore types as slightly altered low-grade Mamatwan-type, hydrothermally altered high-grade Wessels-type and supergene-enriched ore.

Manganese in South Africa: the Kalahari field

Manganese in South Africa means the Northern Cape. The USGS Minerals Yearbook chapter on South Africa for 2020–2021 reports manganese ore production of about 16.2 million tonnes in 2020, against 17 million in 2019 and 7.17 million in 2010. Ore grading 30% to 40% manganese made up 76% of national output in 2020. The long-term rise came from the Mamatwan, Nchwaning and Wessels mines and from newer operations such as Kalahari, Kudumane and Tshipi Borwa.

• Samancor Manganese ran Mamatwan and Wessels near Hotazel, with sales grades of about 40% Mn in 2019 and 2020 and 3.89 million tonnes of ore in 2021.
• Tshipi Borwa had a capacity of 3.6 million tonnes a year and an estimated remaining life of more than 100 years, according to the yearbook.
• Mokala started production in March 2021, planning more than 1 million tonnes a year over an estimated ten-year life.
• Kalagadi, an underground mine at Hotazel, planned 3 million tonnes a year at nearly 39% Mn.

For manganese ore South Africa’s challenge is rarely geology, and manganese exploration there is mostly about finding the right layers under cover. It is logistics: the yearbook repeatedly links expansion plans to Transnet rail capacity. For an explorer, the Kalahari model also sets expectations. Ore sits in specific layers of the Hotazel Formation beneath younger Kalahari sediments, so manganese exploration there is a stratigraphic drilling exercise guided by geophysics and old boreholes rather than outcrop mapping. Prospecting and mining rights are issued under the MPRDA; our South African mining permit and rights guide covers the process.

Manganese in Ghana: Nsuta and the Birimian belts

Ghana was the world’s third-largest producer by manganese content in 2025 on USGS estimates, at about 2.0 million tonnes, after a significant revision of its 2024 figure to 1.28 million tonnes. Its best-known manganese deposits sit in the Birimian rocks of the southwest. The Basel study describes Nsuta, in the Ashanti belt, as one of the most important Precambrian manganese deposits in the world, hosted in 2.1-billion-year-old metavolcanic and metasedimentary rocks.

A study in Mineralium Deposita summarises the deposit’s history: discovered in 1914 and mined from an open pit since 1917, with an upper manganese oxide zone that is now mined out above a manganese carbonate zone found in 1968. That study, from the late 1990s, reported reserves of 13.1 million tonnes and resources of 29.7 million tonnes, figures that are now historical. For current numbers on manganese deposits in Ghana, check the operator’s disclosures and the Minerals Commission.

Manganese inside gold country

Many explorers meet manganese while looking for gold. Birimian greenstone belts host both, and research in Mineralogical Magazine has studied gondites and related manganese-bearing chemical sediments in northern Ghana’s greenstone belts. If your gold licence has dark, heavy, manganese-stained ridges, they are worth mapping in their own right. Licences are granted through the Minerals Commission; our Ghana Minerals Commission licence guide explains the block system and application stages.

Manganese exploration economics: grade, price and value per tonne

Manganese ore trades on a per-unit basis. The USGS price series, from CRU, gives the average cost, insurance and freight price in China for metallurgical ore containing 44% manganese: US$5.27 per metric ton unit in 2021, US$5.97 in 2022, US$4.80 in 2023, US$5.53 in 2024 and US$4.50 in 2025. A metric ton unit is 1% of a tonne of contained manganese, so one tonne of 44% ore holds 44 units. In October 2025, year-to-date spot prices for 44% ore from China were 22% below the 2024 average, according to the USGS.

For manganese exploration, grade therefore matters twice: a higher grade carries more units per tonne, and contract terms adjust the unit price for grade and impurities, while freight and handling cost the same per tonne whatever the grade. The calculator shows how value per tonne changes with grade at the benchmark price. It is for screening, not for valuing a project. Try the IUGS Kalahari grades: at the same unit price, a tonne of Wessels-type ore at about 45% carries roughly a fifth more manganese units than a tonne of Mamatwan-type ore at about 38%, before any contract adjustment for grade, impurities or lump size, which buyers apply on top of the benchmark.

Manganese in Zambia, Australia and the rest of Africa

Manganese in Zambia

Zambia’s manganese sector is small and mixed. The USGS Minerals Yearbook chapter on Zambia for 2020–2021 estimates manganese production of about 82,000 tonnes of contained manganese in 2020, down 27% from 113,000 tonnes in 2019, and records a 45% fall in the export value of manganese ores and concentrates in 2020. Kabundi Resources, a ZCCM-IH subsidiary, started mining at the Serenje Mine in Central Province in May 2020 with an expected capacity of 240,000 tonnes a year. Green Core Enterprises operated in the Mansa area of Luapula Province, and small-scale and artisanal miners worked around Mansa and Mkushi. Processing plants were planned or built in Kapiri Mposhi and Serenje.

For manganese ore in Zambia, most known ground is in those districts, and manganese exploration elsewhere in the country has far less public data to start from. Licensing sits with the mining regulator under the 2024 legislation; our Zambia mining cadastre and licence guide covers the portal and licence types.

Manganese in Australia

Australia produced about 1.6 million tonnes of contained manganese in 2025 on USGS estimates, and a manganese mine in northern Australia that had suspended operations in 2024 after a tropical cyclone restarted in May 2025. The Northern Territory Geological Survey’s chapter on the Carpentaria Basin describes the world-class deposit at Groote Eylandt: pisolitic manganese precipitated in protected coastal areas along the island’s west coast during a late Early Cretaceous marine transgression, now mined by open cut.

Manganese ore in Tanzania and elsewhere

We found no current official production figure for manganese ore in Tanzania in the USGS summary, which lists no Tanzanian output. Anyone evaluating Tanzanian manganese ground should start with the Geological Survey of Tanzania’s occurrence records and the mining cadastre. Côte d’Ivoire produced about 350,000 tonnes of contained manganese in 2025, and Gabon, the second-largest producer, supplies most US imports.

“Ghana’s manganese output rose from 1,280 to 2,000 thousand tonnes of contained metal in a year, on USGS estimates.”

What manganese exploration looks for on the ground and from orbit

Manganese exploration is unusually visual at the outcrop scale. Manganese oxides weather to black or dark brown crusts, ridges and float that stand out against pale greenstones, schists and laterite. The trick is telling a thin coating from a bed or a weathered cap with depth, and telling manganese from iron, which weathers to similar dark tones.

Minerals and textures worth recognising

The Wits study lists bixbyite, braunite, cryptomelane, hausmannite, jacobsite, kutnahorite and todorokite as the predominant minerals of the Kalahari basin, with braunite-rich lutites alternating with banded iron formation in the Hotazel Formation. At Nsuta the minable ore formed where supergene weathering upgraded manganese carbonate protores, so the oxide cap and the carbonate below are two different targets. At Groote Eylandt the ore is pisolitic, made of small rounded manganese oxide grains. Each style has its own look in outcrop and core, and a field team that knows them will sample the right rock.

What imagery adds

• Oxide ridges and plateaus: dark, resistant manganese-rich horizons and laterite surfaces show as linear or tabular features across a licence.
• Structure: faults and folds that repeat or offset a manganese horizon, which decides where to trench next.
• Old workings and pits: small-scale mining leaves visible scars that point to known mineralised ground.
• Cover mapping: in basins like the Kalahari, imagery helps map sand and calcrete cover and plan drill access, even though it cannot see the ore beneath.

A practical manganese exploration sequence

Manganese exploration rewards early attention to grade, impurities and logistics. The sequence below suits most licences.

1. Pick the model. Basin-hosted layers, metamorphosed formations with weathered caps, or small veins and residual deposits.
2. Screen the licence from orbit. Map dark oxide ridges and plateaus, laterite surfaces, structure and old workings across the whole area.
3. Map and sample outcrop and float. Assay manganese, iron, silica, phosphorus and alumina, because impurities drive price.
4. Trench or pit the oxide zone to measure thickness and continuity.
5. Drill for the protore. Weathered caps can be thin; the question is whether carbonate or silicate manganese continues below.
6. Test beneficiation and logistics early: washing, screening, rail and port.

Where our satellite screening fits

Manganese is one of the base metals our platform is built to screen for. Our satellite-based mineral detection analyses multispectral and hyperspectral imagery of your licence, where each mineral and alteration zone has its own spectral signature, and flags likely mineralised target zones, alteration halos, faults and fractures. For manganese exploration that means ranking oxide ridges, weathered plateaus and structural corridors across the whole area before trenching and drilling begin.

• What you send: coordinates, KML/KMZ or a polygon, plus the country and target minerals.
• Turnaround: 5–20 business days depending on area size and mineral complexity.
• 📊 Deliverables: high-potential zones, prospectivity heatmaps, estimated location and depth ranges, geological interpretation, and PDF plus georeferenced GIS files.
• 📊 Premium+: TargetMax™ Drilling Intelligence with drilling-angle recommendations and 3D subsurface models.
• Economics: timelines from months to days and up to 80–85% lower early-exploration cost, with no ground disturbance at the screening stage.

We have scanned 100,000+ hectares for 20+ mineral types in 25+ countries. Draw your licence on mining.farmonaut.com: Map Your Mining Site or see a sample of satellite-driven 3D mineral prospectivity mapping.

Frequently asked questions

Reviewed September 2026 against the USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026 manganese chapter, the USGS Minerals Yearbook chapters for South Africa and Zambia (2020–2021), the IUGS Kalahari Manganese Field geoheritage listing, a University of the Witwatersrand study of the Kalahari field, the University of Basel Nsuta study, a Mineralium Deposita abstract on Nsuta, a Mineralogical Magazine study of northern Ghana, and the Northern Territory Geological Survey’s Carpentaria Basin chapter.

Deposits are named only as geological examples from those sources, with their original dates; Farmonaut did not discover them. Production, reserve and price figures are dated estimates and are revised each year. Satellite targets are exploration targets, not mineral resources, and must be confirmed by sampling and drilling. Nothing here is investment advice.