Mrima Hill: The $60 Billion Opportunity Kenya Cannot Afford to Waste
M rima Hill in Kwale County has quietly sat for centuries as a sacred and culturally significant site for the surrounding Digo community. But beneath this spiritual landscape lies one of the most valuable mineral deposits in modern times: rare earth minerals. Rare earths are a group of 17 elements essential to the technologies that drive the global economy today—electric vehicle motors, wind turbines, smartphones, advanced military equipment, and nearly every green-energy innovation on the planet. The world cannot transition to clean energy or maintain high-tech manufacturing without them. And Kenya is sitting on a hill packed with them. Recent geological studies e stimate that Mrima Hill holds rare earth minerals valued at nearly USD 60 billion. That figure is close to half the size of Kenya’s entire GDP. In Kenyan shillings, that is roughly KSh 9.3 trillion—money that could transform not just the coast, but the country at large. Currently, an Australian consortium has been granted ...