Appian Capital Advisory intends to deploy between $5 billion and $7 billion globally over the next 12 to 24 months, with approximately $2 billion directed to Africa, chief executive Michael Scherb told Reuters. The London based mining private equity firm holds three active investments in Africa and has exited three others, including projects in Burkina Faso affected by a coup and Tanzania affected by an election crisis. It holds four active investments in Latin America, mainly in Brazil.
Scherb’s warning was the point of the interview. African governments have tightened control over their mining sectors in recent years, revising mining codes, raising royalties and demanding greater local participation to capture a larger share of mineral wealth. Latin America, in his account, has generally preserved more stable fiscal and permitting regimes, despite resource nationalism in Chile, Peru and Mexico. “The geology doesn’t change, but government policy does,” Scherb said. “It’s costly for investors to leave, but it’s also costly for governments because that capital simply moves elsewhere.”
Appian named its preferred African jurisdictions: Morocco, Namibia and Botswana as top tier, with opportunities being assessed in Ghana, Ivory Coast, Mauritania and Senegal. The firm invests across gold, copper, zinc, rare earths and other critical minerals, and Scherb said it remains bullish on copper, expecting supply growth to struggle to match demand from electrification, artificial intelligence, data centres and power grid expansion, the same demand case the World Bank used this week to lift its 2027 copper price forecast by 18 percent.
Read against this edition, the interview is a market price on jurisdiction risk rather than a survey of it. Liberia announced state equity and a refining mandate this week, Ghana is financing bauxite expansion against a local processing strategy, and Codelco’s expansions are halted on safety and labour grounds. None of those is an expropriation, and Appian is still allocating $2 billion to the continent. The firm’s actual claim is narrower and more useful: predictable permitting and stable fiscal terms now decide which geologically similar projects get funded first, and African states could capture a significantly larger share of global mining investment by supplying that predictability.