KEY POINTS
- Bravura has deployed three sensor-equipped aircraft to map Madagascar’s subsoil under a December 2025 agreement signed with the Malagasy government.
- The aircraft can detect resources up to three kilometers below ground, with two planes running targeted flights over six months beginning in Toliara.
- Benedict Peters, founder and chief executive of Aiteo, runs Bravura as a pan-African mining vehicle now active in at least 14 countries on the continent.
Bravura has touched down in Madagascar. The pan-African mining vehicle of Benedict Peters is flying three sensor-equipped aircraft over the island to map its untapped mineral base under a deal the company closed with the Malagasy government in December 2025, Madagascar Tribune reported on April 21.
The ceremony marking the arrival of the aircraft took place in Toliara, capital of the Atsimo-Andrefana region in Madagascar’s southwest, at the tail end of a presidential visit. Two of the three planes will run targeted exploration flights over a six-month stretch, with Toliara up first on the itinerary.
Toliara gets the first flights
Colas Rafanoharana, who runs Bravura’s Madagascar office, said the sensors can reach as deep as three kilometers into the ground. On each sortie, the aircraft will pick up mineral signatures, flag exploitable zones and help put an economic value on what lies beneath.
The formal contracts with OMNIS, the Office des Mines Nationales et des Industries Stratégiques, and the Malagasy Ministry of Mines have not closed yet, but Rafanoharana said the resulting data will reach the state at no cost once the paperwork clears.
Madagascar already counts among Africa’s sources of chromite, nickel, cobalt, graphite, sapphires and other gems, and its subsoil keeps drawing international interest. QMM, the ilmenite mine Rio Tinto partly owns in Anosy, is one of the largest projects on the ground. Base Resources’ $3 billion ilmenite and zircon venture in Toliara has meanwhile stalled in community and fiscal disputes for years.
Peters expands his African mining footprint
Peters, 59, founded and still runs Aiteo, Africa’s largest indigenous oil producer. He launched the company as a petroleum trading outfit in 1999 and grew it into a roughly 100,000 barrels-per-day operation that now rests on OML 29, the Niger Delta block Aiteo bought from Shell, Eni and Total for $2.56 billion in 2014.
Outside oil, his mining vehicle Bravura Holdings has spread into platinum, lithium, cobalt, copper, gold and uranium across at least 14 African countries. Peters 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.
The Madagascar deal slots into that broader playbook. More importantly for the Malagasy government, the promised data could shift the balance of information in future concession talks, where international operators have long held sharper maps than the state. If Bravura’s flights produce what geologists suspect, the next wave of negotiations should look very different.
