The Balama operation in Cabo Delgado, Africa’s largest graphite mine and one of the world’s biggest, resumed full exports in mid-2025 after a period of disruption and is now producing at a rate of 100,000 to 120,000 tonnes a year, with its operator targeting an eventual 200,000 to 240,000 tonnes as demand builds.
Structural demand, diversifying supply
The demand case is structural. Graphite is the largest component by volume in an electric-vehicle battery, and with the global battery market growing by roughly a third in 2025, manufacturers outside China are actively diversifying supply. Balama has become a reference point in that search: recent agreements will send Mozambican graphite to Japan’s electric-vehicle market and to a planned anode facility in the Gulf, adding to established offtakes in North America — with the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation backing the mine’s expansion. Every tonne shipped through Nacala and Pemba converts the energy transition into Mozambican export earnings, royalties and jobs.
Graphite is the sharp end of a broader endowment. The Moma mine on the Nampula coast is one of the world’s major sources of titanium minerals, while the Montepuez deposit in Cabo Delgado is regarded as the most significant ruby discovery of modern times, supplying a large share of the global market through international auctions. These are decades-long assets, and even as operators and government work through fiscal terms and a soft commodity cycle, the scale of the resource base is not in question.
A different kind of banking demand
For the financial sector, minerals generate demand that gas does not. Mining exporters need foreign-exchange and hedging capacity to manage revenues earned in dollars against costs in meticais; contractors and transport firms around the mines need equipment finance and working capital; and the local supplier ecosystems that grow up along the corridors need the same contract-backed lending now being built for the LNG value chain. Banks with global markets and trade solutions spanning the continent are natural intermediaries between world-scale mines and a developing local economy.
Mozambique’s diversification debate often jumps from gas straight to agriculture. The minerals sector sits between them: already exporting, already world-class, and — on the evidence of this year’s graphite recovery — already turning upward. Banking that comeback is one of the most concrete opportunities in the market.
