In an industry plagued with accusations of environmental degradation, labour abuse and obscure sourcing, Peter Geleta, CEO of Trinity Metals Group, is keen to defend his company’s mining record during The Africa Report’s visit to one of Trinity’s mines in Nyakabingo on the outskirts of Kigali, Rwanda.

Geleta dons a hard hat and safety vest to lead the way into the heart of the country’s largest tungsten quarry for a first-hand introduction to Rwanda’s rapidly changing mining sector, delighting reporters with tales of his adventures dodging bandits and bureaucrats during a 40-year mining career along the way.

“What’s wonderful about this opportunity is [that] Trinity’s vision for what we want to do … is the same as the government’s vision,” Geleta says. “We see ourselves playing an important role in helping Rwanda and showing the rest of the industry what is possible in a country that has been relatively unexplored and is a huge opportunity.”

Africa’s wealth in critical minerals

Trinity was formed in 2022 from the combination of three privately held Rwandan companies mining for tin (cassiterite), tungsten (wolframite) and tantalum (coltan), minerals collectively known as the 3Ts that are used for a variety of components in electronics manufacturing.

The firm’s largest shareholder is Techmet, a Dublin-based critical minerals investment company with an equity stake from the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC).

Tin exploitation in the area dates back to the early 1930s. The Rutongo mines north of Kigali operate under a 25-year license that began in 2015 but saw their fortunes decline during Covid-19 with depressed metals prices. With the West keen to challenge China’s dominance of the strategic minerals needed to power the green energy revolution, Geleta and his partners seized their moment.

“We saw that these assets had huge potential, but had suffered from a lack of investment,” Geleta says. “So it needed a bit of careful attention. And it needed a bit of modernisation. But we also recognised the potential of investing in Rwanda, because it’s such a good, stable business environment.”

Geleta knows what he’s talking about. He started mining with Anglo-American’s gold division – now AngloGold Ashanti – in his native South Africa, staying with the company for 25 years. After working around the country in different roles, he was part of the team that opened up new mines across the continent, including in Mali, Ghana, Guinea, Tanzania and Namibia, where he served as managing director for the Navachab gold mine.

In 2007 he left the company to join Canada’s Barrick Gold Corporation in search of more international experience, spending the next eight years in Australia, which he described as “very predictable”. When Barrick expanded its operations in “much more exciting” Africa, Geleta says he “jumped at the opportunity”.

“I was really missing Africa and the challenges of Africa and the potential of Africa,” he says.

Sometimes those challenges proved too much. The company had exploration assets in Burkina Faso in the mid-2010s, but nothing much came of them.

“We used to visit, but Burkina was not an easy place at that time, because of the kidnappings and so forth,” Geleta says. “Some of those assets are probably mines today, but, at that stage, we were just drilling.”

By 2017 he was the CEO of Acacia Mining, formerly African Barrick Gold, Tanzania’s largest gold miner. But trouble with former president John Magufuli was brewing – Geleta had his passport seized and spent a week “under hotel arrest” before he managed to get out of the country.

“That was probably the worst time of my career,” he says, “when you’ve had your three senior guys locked up in prison for doing absolutely nothing wrong, just because there was no arbitration.”

The company was delisted the following year and Geleta left mining for a while, eventually joining an international waste management company based in Dubai. But Africa kept calling. Rwanda was long on his bucket list of countries to visit, and “the stars aligned” in 2022.

Shaping a bright future for Rwanda

Today Trinity is the country’s largest private-sector employer, hiring 7,300 people – 99% of them Rwandan. President Paul Kagame’s government holds 5% of the company and has a seat on the board.

There’s a real opportunity for the big in American and European investors to get in and support this project and secure the future because these are long-life assets

Trinity has invested $30m in its assets and hopes to produce a resource and reserve statement early next year for potential investors. Geleta says he hopes to increase tin production to 200 tonnes per month over the next five years, from 40-70 tonnes, and tungsten production to 100 tonnes per month in the near future from around 60-70 tonnes.

The company is also exploring for lithium in Ntunga in eastern Rwanda, where Geleta estimates reserves of more than 15 million metric tons of lithium ore grading at 1.4%.

Geleta is also keen to help bring Rwanda up the minerals value chain, with plans to build processing plants at all three mines – “the more we can do in the country, the better” – and invest in labour force training.

“[Rwandans] have got a lot of experience in small-scale mining, but not a lot of modern mining skills,” he says. “But they’re very hardworking, committed and willing to learn.”

He sees the company as “pathfinders” in Rwanda, helping professionalise the industry and “setting regulations to an international standard”. His approach is informed by his decades of experience.

“Often in African countries, you pay royalties, but it goes to the centre and it doesn’t come back to the local community,” he says. “I think the ideal model is that the local communities are almost a stakeholder, seeing the physical benefits of what you’re doing. And then it’s really successful.”

Trinity’s successes are starting to draw attention. Last month, the DFC approved a $3.8m technical assistance grant for Trinity to “support environmentally responsible mining practices, increase traceability and expand worker safety”.

“Our hope is that this grant will be the first step in helping Trinity attract private investment for its work,” a DFC official tells The Africa Report.

With Rwandan mining still relatively untouched by China, he says, now is the time for the West to engage.

“There’s a real opportunity for the big in American and European investors to get in and support this project and secure the future because these are long-life assets,” he says. “Rwanda is relatively unexplored. So it’s a big opportunity.”