Makuutu is shallow, low-grade and heavy-rare-earth enriched — the profile buyers outside China are actively hunting. It is also spread across densely farmed smallholder land, which makes progressive land access and rehabilitation the decisive risk rather than metallurgy.

The project holds retention and mining lease titles over a large footprint in Mayuge, Bugweri and Bugiri, with staged development planned around modular leaching. Financing and offtake — not resource size — determine the timetable, and both depend on rare-earth prices set well outside East Africa.

We track licence conversions, published resource updates under recognised reporting codes, and whether any separation or refining is committed inside Uganda rather than downstream.

Because mineralisation lies within a few metres of the surface, mining means taking farmland out of use field by field and returning it. Compensation rates, crop valuation and the credibility of rehabilitation promises are therefore the core social risk.

Radioactivity in monazite-bearing material and management of process water are the environmental concerns raised most often by district authorities.