Ongwe Minerals Inc. has announced the discovery of a major new gold-bearing zone at its Omatjete Gold Project in Namibia, with soil samples returning gold grades of up to 730 parts per billion across a mineralised system that already stretches more than five kilometres and remains open in multiple directions.
The newly identified Nguni prospect lies approximately 17 kilometres from Ongwe’s existing Manga gold discovery and about 55 kilometres from Wia Gold Limited’s 2.93 million-ounce Kokoseb gold project, with all three discoveries associated with the same Okondeka Fault Zone structural corridor in Namibia’s rapidly emerging Northwest Damara Gold Belt.
Ongwe said the Nguni discovery represents one of the largest gold-in-soil zones identified in Namibia in recent years and already shows similarities in both size and tenor to the early Kokoseb discovery footprint announced in September 2021.
Chief executive officer Dave Underwood described the discovery as the most significant gold-in-soil target he had encountered in Namibia since he began exploration in the country nearly two decades ago.
“The newly discovered Nguni prospect is the biggest gold in soil anomaly I have seen in Namibia since first embarking on exploration here in 2008,” Underwood said.
“The tenor of the gold anomaly is also very impressive with twenty-eight samples assaying above 300ppb Au and eight above 500ppb Au so far. Although the grade of the soil anomaly doesn’t necessarily indicate the grade in the rocks below, it is promising that the gold numbers are similar to those at Kokoseb, when the discovery was announced in September 2021.”
The company said the gold-bearing zone currently extends for more than five kilometres and remains open to the north, east and west, suggesting the mineralised system could continue well beyond the current exploration footprint.
The strongest soil sample recorded so far returned 730 parts per billion gold, while 28 samples assayed above 300 parts per billion gold, and eight exceeded 500 parts per billion gold. Multi-kilometre gold trends above 100 parts per billion have also been identified across the prospect.
Ongwe said the discovery was made through a regional 200-metre-by-200-metre soil sampling programme combined with its in-house detectORE™ system, a proprietary exploration technology designed to rapidly identify trace gold concentrations in the field using portable X-ray fluorescence analysis.
The company later verified the discovery through laboratory fire assay analysis conducted at MSALABS in Omaruru, following tighter-spaced infill sampling on a 100-metre-by-100-metre grid.
Ongwe has now started even higher-resolution 50-metre-by-50-metre infill sampling to define future drill targets better ahead of a planned drilling campaign scheduled for the second half of 2026.
According to the company, the Nguni prospect lies along a major structural step-over within the Okondeka Fault Zone, where regional-scale faults bend and wrap around brittle leucogranite intrusions, creating hydrothermal pathways that can concentrate gold mineralisation.
Mineralisation appears concentrated within deformed Kuiseb Formation metasediments near granitic contacts, a geological setting that closely resembles that of Kokoseb.
Ongwe said the Okondeka Fault Zone becomes increasingly complex eastward, developing bifurcations, jogs, and splays that remain largely unexplored despite exhibiting geological characteristics similar to those of known gold systems elsewhere along the corridor.
The company highlighted that the 17-kilometre strike corridor between the Manga and Nguni discoveries remains essentially unexplored, despite both discoveries already defining substantial gold footprints.
The Manga discovery itself has a strike footprint of approximately 4.5 kilometres, while the newly identified Nguni zone already extends for about five kilometres.
Ongwe said the highest-grade northwestern section of the Nguni discovery wraps around a granite dome. At the same time, mineralisation extends eastward toward a strongly altered, iron-oxidised outcrop known as Gossan Hill.
The company noted that a thin layer of alluvial scree cover currently limits geological mapping across parts of the prospect, potentially explaining why such a large mineralised zone remained undiscovered historically.
To further define the system’s structure and geometry, Ongwe plans to conduct detailed magnetic surveys using its in-house drone platform. Additional land access agreements are also being finalised to allow exploration to continue east of Nguni and across the unexplored corridor between Nguni and Manga.
The Omatjete Gold Project covers approximately 151,800 hectares and forms part of Ongwe’s broader land position across the Northwest Damara Gold Belt.
Beyond Omatjete, the company also controls the 154,000-hectare Khorixas Gold Project, which hosts the Belmont Prospect with a 12-kilometre-by-6-kilometre surface footprint, as well as the 46,000-hectare Outjo Gold Project, located along strike from Osino Resources’ Eureka gold discovery.
Ongwe said exploration work is also continuing at other targets across its Namibian portfolio, including bedrock sampling east of the Manga discovery, drilling at the Belmont Prospect and further work at the K17 Southern Shear target.
“This discovery validates our faith in the Omatjete Gold Project, and we look forward to developing the Nguni and Manga targets while continuing the grassroots sampling over the rest of this exciting and rapidly emerging gold district,” Underwood said.
