Mining has rarely had this much cash and this little conviction about where to put it. The top 40 miners earned 909 billion dollars of revenue in 2025 and pushed net profit to 120 billion, yet capital velocity stayed flat and share buybacks jumped 252 percent. The money is going somewhere. Just not, mostly, into new mines. Here is where it is actually flowing in 2026, and what that means if you sell into the industry.
Where is mining investment going in 2026?
Into gold and copper, through brownfield expansions and deals rather than new discoveries. Gold took 6.15 billion dollars of the 12.4 billion global exploration budget in 2025, about half. Copper hit a 12-year exploration high and drove the year’s biggest merger. Greenfield exploration sits at an all-time low share.
The cash-rich, commitment-poor paradox
Operating cash flow across the top 40 rose 12 percent to 173.6 billion dollars in 2025, but exploration budgets fell for a third straight year. The explanation is cost of capital. Miners now carry a weighted average cost of capital of 8 to 10 percent, double what big tech pays, so boards favour buybacks, brownfield tonnes and streaming deals over decade-long greenfield bets. When they do move, they buy existing ounces: 2025 M&A reached 93.7 billion dollars, the highest since 2012, with gold in half the deals and the Anglo American and Teck merger, a combined entity near 53 billion dollars, providing the centrepiece. That merger also decides the future shape of South Africa’s Kumba, as covered in our Kumba analysis.
The commodity rotation, in numbers
Copper broke 14,000 dollars a tonne at the start of 2026, with 2026 deficit forecasts between 330,000 and 600,000 tonnes and data centres alone expected to consume 475,000 tonnes. Uranium re-crossed 100 dollars a pound in January 2026 with exploration spend up 33 percent. Lithium whipsawed: prices roughly doubled between December 2025 and May 2026 just after the industry halved lithium exploration budgets, a timing mismatch that will show up as a supply gap later. On the way out: diamonds, where Anglo has written De Beers down by 5 billion dollars across two years, and thermal coal, which Glencore is running down while it pivots capital to copper. Gold prices ended mid-2026 around double their early-2025 level, which is why every gold producer suddenly has a project pipeline again.
Where does Africa fit?
Africa drew 1.44 billion dollars of exploration spend in 2025, up 11 percent and holding 10 percent of the world total, but development capital tells the bigger story. Barrick is spending 2 billion dollars doubling Lumwana in Zambia. The DRC’s Kamoa-Kakula complex carries 1.1 to 1.4 billion dollars of capex in 2026 alone. West African gold construction exceeds 2 billion dollars across Kone, Assafou and their peers. Chinese engagement hit a record: 61.2 billion dollars of Belt and Road agreements in Africa in 2025, nearly four times the prior year, while Western capital answers through state-anchored vehicles like the 753 million dollar Lobito rail financing. The full country-by-country map is in our Africa investment guide.
Why is South Africa missing the party?
Exploration spend fell a seventh consecutive year in 2025, to R738 million, under 1 percent of the world total against a government target of 5 percent. Real mining capex fell 9.6 percent in 2024. A typical new South African project needs around R20 billion and ten years, and boards have not seen the certainty to commit. What changed in 2025-26: Transnet’s coal railings recovered toward 64 million tonnes a year, private rail access agreements were signed, and record PGM prices restored margins, with platinum forecast up 71 percent in 2026. The money that is arriving is precise: Ivanhoe’s Platreef ramping toward 450,000 PGM ounces with a 700 million dollar project financing, and Orion’s Prieska copper build backed by a 250 million dollar Glencore facility. Investors have not abandoned South Africa. They have become selective about infrastructure-proof projects, a theme our investor page tracks.
What this means for suppliers
Follow the brownfield money. The industry’s revealed preference is expansions, life extensions, plant upgrades and streaming-funded builds, which means procurement flows through existing operations rather than new camps. In Africa that puts copper corridor projects, West African gold builds and South African PGM life-extension work at the top of the target list. AMIQ tracks 2,200+ African mining projects with verified owner and engineer contacts, including every build named here. Join at AMIQ.
Frequently asked questions
Which commodity attracts the most mining investment?
Gold dominates exploration, taking about half the 12.4 billion dollar global budget in 2025. Copper dominates growth capital: the Anglo-Teck merger, BHP’s multi-billion Chile programme and Africa’s biggest builds are all copper-led. Uranium is the fastest riser from a small base.
Is mining investment increasing or decreasing?
Both. Top-20 miner capex edges up about 4 percent in 2026 to around 82 billion dollars, while exploration budgets have fallen three years running. Money is concentrating in fewer, larger, lower-risk projects rather than spreading into new discoveries.
Why are mining companies buying back shares instead of building mines?
Cost of capital and memory. At an 8 to 10 percent cost of capital, a decade-long greenfield project must clear a high bar, and boards remember the value destruction of the last boom’s overbuilding. Buybacks return cash without execution risk, which is why they rose 252 percent in 2025.
Where should mining investors look in Africa?
The copper corridors of the DRC, Zambia and Botswana, stable-jurisdiction gold builds in Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana and Tanzania, Namibian uranium, and South African PGM projects now that prices have recovered. Infrastructure-backed projects along the Lobito and TAZARA rail routes carry the strongest tailwinds.
