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Introduction

The Ntem licence in located in south west Cameroon. The licence covers and area of 987km² with hilly rain forested terrane an average elevation of 200 m. The climate is tropical with a rainy season from August to October. Access is via tarred and laterite roads.

Exploration Summary

The Bureau de Recherches Géologiques et Minières (BRGM) mapped the area and in the 1990s commissioned an airborne survey which covers the south east part of the licence area. African Aura commenced exploration in June 2007 targeting shear zone and banded iron formation (BIF) hosted gold within the Archaean age Ntem complex. Sixteen of seventeen first phase pan concentrate samples yielded visible gold from three areas on the licence. Alluvial artisanal mining is ongoing at the villages of Abiete and Assoke.

The latest assay results from the extended soil sampling at Ntem reveal a 3km long, NE striking soil anomaly defined by a >35ppb gold in soil contour. The soil programme comprised 900 samples collected at 50m intervals along 100m spaced lines across an area selected on the basis of the Company's drainage sampling programme. The zones, which remain open along strike, are considered to be the source of alluvial gold being worked by artisans in the principal drainages (Figure 1).

Figure 1 Soil sampling results at Ntem (October 2008)


Five trenches were dug before the rains across the southern half of the above mentioned soil anomaly, two of which transected quartz veins in an amphibiolite + banded iron formation package from which visible gold was panned on site. Assays from the trenching are pending.

Geological setting

The Ntem region forms part of the northern segment of the Congo craton. It consists of two main groups: the Ntem complex and the Nyong series. The Ntem complex is Archaean and was reworked together with the Paleoproterozoic Nyong series during the Birimian. The Ntem unit is made up of intrusive rocks (porphyritic leucocratic and charnockitic granites) hosted in a volcano-sedimentary complex of a similar age which includes gneisses and BIF complexes (greenstone assemblage). Metamorphosed ultramafic rocks as well as amphibolites and eclogites are also present. Structurally, the region is dominated by north-south shear zones and faults.