The Djoum and Akonolinga and Essong licences are located within the central southern region of Cameroon and cover and area of 1,994km2 within tropical rainforest. Access is good by a combination of paved and laterite roads. The northern part of the licence area is approximately 2 hours drive south east of the capital, Yaounde.

Exploration summary

The BRGM mapped the area in the 1990s and commissioned an airborne magnetic survey which revealed a 13km long domain change magnetic anomaly in the north of the Djoum III licence, identified as a significant series of four iron rich hills.

Figure 1 Interpreted iron formations on the Djoum licence

Recent field programmes have targetted the iron hills to improve access, and to confirm the grades of iron in float samples. Assay results will be available shortly.

Photo 1 The iron hills on Djoum licence

The survey also identified at least five kilometres of magnetic highs in the northwest of the Akonolinga licence which are interpreted as being underlain by fault fragmented, basic greenstone terranes possibly with associated banded iron formations ("BIF"s). Previous field programmes targetted gold deposits within the 150km greenstone belt that strikes across both licences. Stream sediment sampling has been completed across approximately 60% of the licences with coarse gold recovered from 48 sample locations.

Geological setting

The Akonolinga and Djoum licences are underlain by part of the Archaean Ntem complex, and early Palaeoproterozoic Nyong series rocks located in this northernmost exposure of the reworked Congo craton. The licences enclose a 150km long greenstone belt interpreted by the BRGM from ground observations of airborne magnetic anomalies. Lithologies include ultramafic rocks, schists, gneisses (greenschist to upper amphibolite facies), metagranitoids making up part of the Congo craton, and banded iron formation at Nkout. All these lithologies are widely affected by NNE-SSW and east-west striking shear zones.