Mineral exploration and development company Serval Resources has set out work programmes for its copper exploration projects in Namibia and Botswana. Following a budgeting review, the company has also agreed to a “small but impactful” work programme in Côte d'Ivoire to advance the Duékoué molybdenum/copper project.

Serval will carry out systematic exploration, using a combination of geological mapping, geophysics and soil sampling to build an understanding of the known mineralisation within its licences.

These work programmes run until the middle of 2027 and are fully funded. Each programme includes resources dedicated to environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations, with a focus on stakeholder engagement to ensure respectful access to land, environmental management in line with local regulations and maintaining appropriate health and safety measures.

“Further to our recent Aim listing and concurrent fundraise, the focus has been on setting out the most high-impact and targeted work programmes possible in line with our available budget. This has been achieved and we are currently mobilising our teams in order to complete our extensive work in the field in the coming months.

“The goal, as always, is systematic exploration [using] a combination of geological techniques in order to build upon our knowledge of the known mineralisation. We are confident that this multi-dataset approach will significantly derisk future drilling which we intend to start at our projects during the second half of 2026,” says Serval CEO Robin Birchall.

Serval has established a large land package in the Kaoko basin in Namibia, which is the interpreted extension of the Central African Copperbelt straddling the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia.

Birchall adds that historical drilling and geochemical work on several of the Namibian licences has demonstrated intersections of copper and silver mineralisation from surface, providing immediate targets for further definition, with the potential to delineate a maiden resource in due course.

On geological mapping, the company’s plan until December includes targeting areas based on historical prospects and previous drilling results, with the aim of initial site reconnaissance to identify and map surface mineralisation, document visible mineralisation, and the recording of structural features to enable extrapolation to areas of limited or no outcrop.

Drilling will focus on the most prospective targets with the aim of intersecting mineralisation at depth to demonstrate the potential strike and depth extent of mineralised system. This, Serval highlights, will allow the company to develop an exploration target with a lower and upper margin for tonnage and grade.

Serval has also established a major landholding of 18 licences covering 1 283 km² in the Kalahari Copper Belt, and its work programme in Botswana will focus on better understanding the theoretical extension of the mineralisation structures under these licences.

The company also notes that exploration in the Kalahari Copper Belt is complicated by the overburden of sand that lies above the bedrock at varying depths, and in some places, other barren structures such as Karoo volcanic sequences.

The work programme at Duékoué aims to identify structural trends, lithological contrasts, magnetic alteration zones that may be associated with potential mineralisation.

The combined insights from these work programmes aim to identify where exactly the anomaly is the strongest, and where the underlying geology creates the structures and fluid pathways that could potentially generate a large iron-oxide/copper/gold type deposit.