Projects Overview: Lunga

Project Highlights

• Highly prospective geology in 1,219km² area
• Potential for Kansanshi or IOCG style copper-gold
• Potential for Langer Heinrich type Uranium
• Extensive geochemical surveys conducted
• Joint Venture partner sought

Location and History

The project is located in the Lunga Basin in Central Zambia, approximately 320km northwest of the capital city, Lusaka and 200km southwest of the Zambian Copperbelt.

Between the 1950s and 1970s the Chartered Exploration Company and its successor Zamanglo carried out regional drainage and soil geochemical surveys revealing regional copper anomalies covering some 60km². In addition, Zamanglo identified 24 mineral occurrences within the area of the African Eagle’s (AFE) prospecting licence. Fifteen geochemical anomalies and mineral occurrences were investigated in detail, but only Chifumpa, Buffalo, Kaungashi and Karenda were drilled. Trial mining was attempted at Buffalo and Chifumpa. Some of these prospects were further investigated by Avmin between 2000 and 2003. Small-scale miners have been active in the area especially on the copper oxide resources at Chifumpa.

Geology

Owing to a lack of outcrop, the geology of the Lunga Basin is poorly understood. The area is underlain by sediments of the Katanga Supergroup and located in the axial zone of the Lufilan Arc, which hosts the giant deposits of the Zambian Copperbelt, some 200km northeast. The large Hook Granite Batholith, which intruded the Katanga metasediments during the Pan African Orogeny, is exposed to the south of Lunga and is believed to extend beneath the rocks of the project area.

Current status and upside potential

AFE conducted an airborne geophysical magnetic and gamma-ray spectrometric survey over the licence in 2005 and former partner MinEx collected 4,000 soil geochemical samples on a 1000m x 500m grid over the entire licence. Follow up sampling was completed during the latter part of 2006, on a 100m x 50m grid over the most prospective zones. Extensive copper-gold anomalies were defined at the old Buffalo mine in the north of the licence and on the east and west “noses” of the Karenda Dome in the south of the licence, east of Chifumpa.

The copper anomaly on the western end of the Karenda Dome extends for more than 7km, with a gold association over half that distance. On the eastern flank of the dome the copper anomaly is 10km long and has elevated gold values over about 7km. Diamond drilling in the 1950s revealed a significant shallow copper oxide zone more than 10m thick and 180m long. A large number of pits were also sunk to a maximum depth of 15m and a report dated December 1959 noted that “interesting copper values were obtained at increasing depth in pits away from the peak of the anomaly”.

The Karenda Dome contains a core of sandstone overlain by carbonates and sandstones of Kundelungu age. Geological mapping by AFE in late 2007 revealed exposures of very unusual rocks including several hills composed of iron oxides and ridges of breccia of likely hydrothermal origin. It is probable that the Hook Granite Batholith, which outcrops to the south of the area, lies concealed at a shallow depth beneath Karenda Dome and that these unusual rock types are indications of an Iron Oxide-Copper-Gold (IOCG) environment.

At the Buffalo area, in the northwest of the licence, the geology is complex and poorly understood. Eight mineral occurrences are known in a 30km² area around the old Buffalo Mine. Breccias which outcrop on hills in the area have been tentatively identified by previous explorers as the Grand Conglomerate, a glacial tillite occurring in the lower Kundelungu sequence, which hosts world class copper deposits in the Congo. Limited drilling carried out by Avmin showed that the tillite is mineralised. One hole at Kandeo, near Buffalo, intersected low grade copper mineralisation of 0.34% to 0.46% copper over about 38m, and another at Buffalo West, intersected 1.72m at 2.38% copper.

The Company’s airborne spectrometric data show extensive uranium anomalies in the central part of the licence, associated with a river valley system which appears to be a fossil catchment largely by-passed by the modern drainage. These anomalies may be caused by uranium in calcrete, similar to those at Langer Heinrich and elsewhere in Namibia.

Future Programme

AFE is currently conducting ground spectrometer surveys to investigate the uranium anomalies and plans to complete an airborne EM and/or gravity survey in early 2008 to define copper-gold targets for drilling. The company is seeking to joint venture this project with development partners.

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Uranium airborne radiometric anomalies - central area

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Copper-gold soil anomalies

Hydrothermal breccia - Karenda Dome

IP geophysical survey - Karenda Dome

Lunga fact sheet - January 2008
(PDF - 2.15MB)