Ondundu is one of Namibia’s oldest recorded gold fields, a place where the country’s first meaningful gold rush broke out more than a century ago.
The deposit was discovered in 1917, at a time when northern central Namibia was still an unexplored frontier of the Damara Belt.
Claims were pegged around 1922, and within months, individual miners, prospectors and small syndicates streamed into the area.
They worked the weathered ridges, dry stream channels and shallow oxidised veins that cut across what is now known as the Ondundu Main Zone.
Between 1923 and 1945, these small operators extracted gold from alluvial, eluvial and shallow underground workings.
Production records of the time are incomplete, partly because a 15 per cent royalty encouraged under-reporting, but the surviving figures show around 11,600 ounces were formally recorded, with a more realistic estimate of about 20,000 ounces recovered in total.
After 1945, the field quietened, though intermittent small-scale mining is mentioned as late as the early 1960s.
Ondundu never became a mine in the industrial sense; it remained a cluster of diggings, tunnels and trenches that represented the earliest era of gold extraction in Namibia.
The modern chapter began in the 1980s when the area, by then consolidated under Mineral Deposit Retention Licence 1552, attracted the interest of Tsumeb Corporation Limited and Goldfields Namibia.
The two companies drilled 28 diamond holes totalling 5,583 metres across the Ondundu Main Zone and tried to interpret the geometry of its quartz-carbonate veins. Their work produced three historic, non-compliant resource estimates in 1983, 1987 and 1989. The first estimate, in 1983, suggested a large but low-grade system of 42 million tonnes grading 0.39 grams per tonne.
Later, Goldfields’ tighter modelling yielded higher-grade scenarios of around 4.5 million tonnes at more than three grams per tonne. None of these estimates meet today’s NI 43-101 standards, but they established two essential truths.
First, Ondundu carries gold over a multi-kilometre strike length, and second, the gold occurs in coarse, erratic clusters that create a powerful nugget effect.
This characteristic would shape the project’s exploration destiny for decades.
After TCL and Goldfields wound down their involvement, the ground saw another short revival in the late 1990s under a joint venture between Keadeber Resources and Southern Cross Exploration.
The venture took a 600-kilogram bulk sample to Mintek in Johannesburg, which confirmed that most of Ondundu’s gold occurs in coarse size fractions; a finding that echoed the observations of early miners. When MDRL 1552 eventually lapsed, the project again fell idle.
The next decisive moment arrived in 2003 when Namibia’s Ministry of Mines and Energy granted Exclusive Prospecting Licence 3195 to Omajete Mining Company.
Two years later, Westport Resources Namibia, which would later become a wholly owned subsidiary of Toronto-listed Forsys Metals Corp, acquired an initial 32 per cent interest in Omajete Mining.
In 2007, Westport acquired the remaining 68 per cent, giving Forsys indirect ownership of the entire 19,969-hectare Ondundu project.
Westport brought modern methods to a project that had last seen serious attention in the 1980s.
In 2005, it carried out a verification programme of 156 surface samples along the 2.7-kilometre ridge of the Main Zone, confirming grades up to 119.5 grams per tonne.
The company commissioned an airborne hyperspectral survey that revealed alteration halos associated with sediment-hosted orogenic gold systems.
A regional stream sediment survey traced anomalous gold in two main drainage channels, with values up to 1.91 grams per tonne.
In 2006, Westport drilled 11 shallow diamond holes totalling 524.7 metres. The programme confirmed that high-grade shoots occur, but tracing continuity between holes is complex due to the coarse gold and the veins’ structural complexity.
From 2007 to 2009, Westport opened 23 trenches across a seven-kilometre area, with some intersections returning continuous grades over 170 metres and individual spikes as high as 68.1 grams per tonne.
Ground magnetics, VLF and spectrometry revealed anomalies around the Main Zone and northwards into the OD6 grid area, where copper-gold and breccia-style mineralisation hinted at a broader epithermal system.
In 2010, Forsys entered an earn-in arrangement with Golconda Capital Corp via Angus Mining (Namibia).
The deal offered Angus the right to earn up to a 75 per cent interest by spending US$5 million by late 2011, and a further US$6 million, plus a bankable feasibility study, by 2012.
Although technically sound on paper, the earn-in never materialised into a long-term ownership shift. Instead, Forsys eventually consolidated the project under a new Namibian entity, Razorback Gold Mining Company, which held EPL 3195, with Westport owning 51 per cent.
This structure set the stage for the next major transition.
In 2015, Forsys signed a restated earn-in and option agreement with B2Gold, then emerging as one of Namibia’s most active gold explorers.
The agreement allowed B2Gold to earn majority, and eventually full, ownership of Razorback by funding exploration.
Over the next several years, B2Gold drilled tens of thousands of metres, reinterpreting the structural setting and generating the most comprehensive geological model ever produced for Ondundu.
By January 2022, B2Gold exercised its option to acquire Forsys’s remaining 51 per cent stake, becoming the 100 per cent owner of Razorback Gold Mining Company and, by extension, of EPL 3195.
The final ownership transition came swiftly. In July 2022, B2Gold sold the entire Ondundu project to Osino Resources Corp, the Canadian company best known for discovering and advancing the Twin Hills gold project near Karibib.
Osino acquired the shares of Razorback Gold Mining Company for a package valued at roughly US$15.2 million, giving it full ownership of EPL 3195.
Osino then published a maiden NI 43-101 mineral resource estimate for Ondundu in October 2022, outlining 26 million tonnes at 1.13 grams per tonne gold for approximately 900,000 ounces of inferred resources. This was the first compliant resource ever declared for a project with a history stretching back more than a century.
Today, Ondundu is an advanced exploration project under Osino, sitting alongside Twin Hills as part of a broader Namibian gold strategy.
Osino has continued drilling, refining the 3D geological model and testing the down-plunge extensions that earlier programmes could not reach.
The company is assessing whether the project could be developed as a standalone operation or integrated into a regional production strategy that could transform Namibia’s historic gold belt into a modern mining district.
From the alluvial workings of 1917 to Osino’s latest resource modelling, Ondundu has travelled a long, winding road of discovery, forgotten shafts, ownership reorganisations and renewed interest.
It remains one of Namibia’s most intriguing gold systems. This deposit has defied simple interpretation for more than one hundred years but continues to reward those who return with better science, deeper drilling and a longer view of the landscape. Photo credit: Gerhard W Louw
