Southern Namibia’s mining identity has for decades largely revolved around zinc and diamonds, with operations such as Rosh Pinah Zinc, Skorpion Zinc and Namdeb helping define the economic landscape of the country’s ǁKaras Region.
Now, however, the emergence of the Bonya Rare Earth District near Lüderitz and Aus is reshaping perceptions of the south as a potential new frontier for critical minerals and rare-earth development.
Recent exploration results released by London-listed Kendrick Resources suggest the region may host a rare-earth system of global significance, potentially helping transform southern Namibia from a traditional zinc-producing region into an increasingly diversified critical-minerals hub.
Kendrick’s rapid advance at Bonya only began earlier this year.
The company first secured an option over the rare earth licences on 22 January 2026, then exercised the option and signed a definitive agreement on 23 February 2026 with Bonya Exploration Pty Namibia and its shareholder, Wilhelm Shali.
Under the agreement, Kendrick secured a 70% interest in EPL4458 and EPL6691 through a transaction comprising US$300 000 in cash and 22 million Kendrick shares, with further payments linked to licence extensions.
The transaction also included an additional US$500 000 cash payment and the issuance of three million additional Kendrick shares upon successful licence renewals.
Since entering the project, Kendrick has moved aggressively to reassess historical drilling, expand exploration programmes, intensify geological interpretation work and rapidly advance both the Teufelskuppe and Kieshöhe projects.
The pace of development has increasingly positioned Bonya as one of Namibia’s more active emerging critical mineral projects.
The Bonya district comprises the Teufelskuppe and Kieshöhe projects, both of which are part of a large carbonatite-hosted rare-earth system in southern Namibia.
Kendrick Resources said initial assessment work at its Kieshöhe Project has confirmed the potential for what could become a major rare earth project alongside the company’s flagship Teufelskuppe deposit within the broader Bonya Rare Earth District.
The company said pXRF analysis from drilling returned grades of up to 5.46% Total Rare Earth Oxides (TREO), while every borehole drilled to date has intersected mineralised carbonatite or rare-earth-bearing dyke material, suggesting the mineralised system remains open at depth.
Kendrick said systematic pXRF analysis of seven previously untested historical drill holes, inherited through the Bonya Project acquisition, delivered an average TREO grade of 1.51 wt%, dominated by high-value light rare earth elements, including neodymium and praseodymium.
Among the strongest reported intersections were 1 metre at 5.46 wt% TREO in borehole KH013A, 1 metre at 3.53 wt% TREO in KH015, 1 metre at 3.22 wt% TREO in KH014 and 3.25 metres at 2.73 wt% TREO in KH013A.
The company said the latest results increasingly suggest that earlier assumptions about the relative importance of Kieshöhe compared to Teufelskuppe may have significantly underestimated the project’s true scale and potential.
While grades at Kieshöhe appear marginally lower than those at Teufelskuppe, Kendrick believes the overall tonnage potential could ultimately prove substantially larger because of the scale and continuity of the carbonatite-hosted mineralised system.
Chairperson Colin Bird said the latest drilling and assessment work represented a major milestone in the development of the broader Bonya Rare Earth District.
“These results mark an important milestone in the development of the Bonya Rare Earth Project and significantly enhance our view of the potential scale of the district,” Bird said.
“Historically, Teufelskuppe was considered the dominant discovery within Bonya. However, our ongoing assessment of Kieshöhe increasingly indicates that this view may prove to be overly conservative.”
Bird said the fact that every borehole terminated in mineralised carbonatite or associated rare earth-bearing dykes was particularly encouraging because it suggested the mineralised system remains open at depth.
“The discovery of widespread mineralisation, strong grades and, importantly, the fact that every borehole ended in mineralised carbonatite gives us growing confidence that Kieshöhe may represent a much larger rare earth system,” he said.
He added that the possibility that both Teufelskuppe and Kieshöhe are part of a broader mineralised district creates an opportunity to define what Kendrick believes could become a world-class rare-earth resource.
“With average grades of 1.51 wt% TREO placing Kieshöhe in the upper quartile of comparable hard-rock rare earth projects globally, together with high-grade intercepts of up to 5.46 wt% TREO, we believe the project has the potential to become a strategically important rare earth asset in its own right,” Bird said.
Historical drilling conducted between 2016 and 2018 had already identified extensive carbonatite-hosted mineralisation, including grades of up to 10 wt% TREO and an overall project head grade of about 1.6 wt% TREO.
According to Kendrick, the rare earth assemblage at Kieshöhe is dominated by cerium, lanthanum, neodymium and praseodymium, with the strong presence of neodymium and praseodymium considered strategically important because of their use in permanent magnet technologies for electric vehicles, wind turbines and advanced electronics.
The company said that benchmarking against comparable hard-rock rare-earth developments globally places Kieshöhe in the upper quartile of rare-earth projects by grade.
The speed of Kendrick’s advancement at Bonya has become increasingly visible through a steady stream of announcements released between March and June 2026, including drill updates, internal valuation work, development planning and expanded exploration programmes.
In May 2026, Kendrick announced an internal valuation of approximately US$400 million for the Teufelskuppe rare earth system, while the company simultaneously intensified drilling at both Teufelskuppe and Kieshöhe.
Bird said Kendrick is now working towards defining a combined resource capable of underpinning one of the world’s most significant rare earth developments.
“At the time of releasing the recent in-house valuation, we had not received the KH drill results and thus KH is assigned no value in the valuation report,” he said.
“The plan remains to integrate the two projects which will significantly enhance the overall project value and the contribution of Bonya in the rare earth arena.”
Kendrick said additional drill rigs are now active across the Bonya Project as the company works to expand drilling coverage, define the lateral and vertical extent of mineralisation, advance resource modelling and complete laboratory verification of pXRF results.
Those developments are increasingly changing the mineral narrative of southern Namibia itself.
For decades, the southern region’s mining economy has been closely associated with zinc production through operations such as Skorpion Zinc and Rosh Pinah, as well as coastal diamond mining and smaller base-metal operations inland.
The emergence of Bonya is now introducing rare earths and critical minerals into that mining equation at a time when global economies are racing to secure long-term supply chains for strategic energy transition minerals.
Unlike traditional commodities, rare earth elements are increasingly viewed as geopolitically strategic because of their importance in defence technologies, renewable energy systems, robotics, electric mobility and advanced manufacturing.
What is unfolding around Lüderitz and Aus is increasingly becoming more than an isolated exploration programme.
It is gradually repositioning southern Namibia from a region historically defined by zinc and diamonds to a potentially important future centre for rare-earth and critical-mineral development.
