South Africa. By a wide margin. The United States Geological Survey estimates South African mines produced roughly 7,600 kilotons in 2025 — about 38 percent of global manganese output, the largest share of any country on earth. Gabon and Australia trail in second and third place.

The deposits run deeper than the production figures suggest. South Africa holds roughly 31 percent of the world’s known manganese reserves, most of it beneath the Kalahari Basin in the Northern Cape. As one producer region after another, this is the asset base the EV transition keeps coming back to.

Here is the tension investors should understand. Manganese is essential to steel — over 90 percent of demand — and increasingly critical for EV battery cathodes. South Africa digs it up, but China buys most of it: Beijing accounts for roughly 71 percent of global imports and over 85 percent of refining capacity for high-purity battery-grade manganese. The ore leaves African soil as a commodity; the margin is captured abroad.

That gap is the opportunity. South Africa’s own Critical Minerals and Metals Strategy now names manganese a priority mineral and puts beneficiation — processing ore into higher-value products at home — at its center. If local refining and alloy production scale, South Africa stops exporting just tons and starts exporting margin. For investors watching African critical minerals, manganese is the next chapter after cobalt and lithium — and South Africa holds the pen.