KEY POINTS
- Benedict Peters’ pan-African mining company Bravura is deploying three sensor-equipped aircraft to scan Madagascar’s subsoil and map mineral deposits under a December 2025 agreement.
- Two of the aircraft will run targeted exploration flights over six months, starting in the Toliara region in the southwest, and the data will go to the Malagasy government at no cost.
- Peters, founder and chief executive of Aiteo, has pushed Bravura into at least 14 African countries covering platinum, lithium, cobalt, copper, gold and uranium.
Benedict Peters has sent three sensor-equipped aircraft to Madagascar to map the island’s untapped mineral wealth. The pan-African resources mogul is acting through his mining company Bravura under a December 2025 agreement with the Malagasy government, Madagascar Tribune reported on April 21.
The aircraft arrived in a ceremony at Toliara, the capital of the Atsimo-Andrefana region in the country’s southwest, on the final leg of Madagascar’s president’s visit. Two of the three planes will fly targeted exploration routes over six months, starting in the Toliara area.
Three aircraft scan the subsoil
Colas Rafanoharana, Bravura’s country manager in Madagascar, said the aircraft can detect resources up to three kilometers below the surface. Bravura will use the planes to scan subsoil, flag mineral deposits, identify exploitable zones and put an economic value on what it finds.
Specific contracts with OMNIS, the Office des Mines Nationales et des Industries Stratégiques, and Madagascar’s Ministry of Mines still need to clear before flights proceed. Then Bravura will hand the data to the Malagasy state at no cost.
Madagascar already ships chromite, nickel, cobalt, graphite, sapphires and other gems. QMM, the ilmenite mine Rio Tinto partly owns in Anosy, is one of several major international projects on the island. Toliara itself hosts Base Resources’ long-delayed $3 billion ilmenite and zircon project, which has spent years stuck in community and fiscal disputes.
Peters builds beyond oil
Peters, 59, founded and runs Aiteo, Africa’s largest indigenous oil producer. Over the decades, he built the company from a 1999 trading outfit into a roughly 100,000 barrels-per-day operation that leans on OML 29, the Niger Delta block Aiteo bought from Shell, Eni and Total for $2.56 billion in 2014. The block sits on the site of Nigeria’s first commercial oil strike in 1956.
Bravura Holdings is his separate mining arm. Through it, Peters has pushed into platinum, lithium, cobalt, copper, gold and uranium across at least 14 African countries. He also committed $1 billion to a Zimbabwe platinum mine, holds four mining rights in the DRC through Bravura Congo S.A. and signed an MoU in February 2026 to redevelop the Port of Boma.
Madagascar sees the aircraft arrival as more than a technical exercise. Reliable subsurface data has long sat with international companies rather than the state, handing foreign operators a structural edge in every concession talk. If the Bravura survey delivers, Madagascar will enter its next round of negotiations with sharper numbers and stronger leverage on the terms of future mining deals.
