LISTING on the Victoria Falls Stock Exchange (VFEX) has been a game-changer for Kavango Resources, enabling the London-headquartered mining junior to raise nearly US$14 million, predominantly from local pension funds, as it develops its Hillside gold project in Zimbabwe’s historic Filabusi Greenstone Belt, the company’s Chief Operating Officer has revealed.
By Rudairo Mapuranga
Speaking at the Chamber of Mines Annual Conference Gold Symposium sponsored by Mutapa Gold Resources, Kavango Resources COO and Executive Director Alex Gorman shared the company’s journey from acquiring an existing mine to declaring JORC-compliant resources and tapping into local capital markets.
“Hillside is Kavango’s first 100%-owned gold project in Zimbabwe and the foundation of its broader production strategy in the country,” Gorman said. Located in the Filabusi Greenstone Belt, the project is positioned across a major regional deformation zone typically associated with shear-hosted gold deposits.
From existing mine to JORC resources
Kavango took on Hillside about three years ago, acquiring an existing underground mine and processing centre that had operated on a small scale for approximately 100 years. Since then, the company has completed about 10 kilometres of reverse circulation and diamond drilling, leading to the declaration of two JORC-compliant Mineral Resource Estimates.
In October 2025, Kavango announced a preliminary JORC-compliant resource of 20,000 ounces of gold at the Nightshift Prospect, with 11,000 ounces in the Indicated category and 9,000 ounces in the Inferred category. Then, in February 2026, the company declared a maiden resource of 33,900 ounces at Bill’s Luck Gold Mine, bringing the total JORC-compliant resource at Hillside to 52,900 ounces.
“The JORC MRE reports a total resource of 20,000 ounces of gold at 0.86 grams per tonne,” the company announced at the time.
Artisanal miners as exploration vectors
Gorman highlighted an unconventional but highly effective exploration tool the company has employed — working with artisanal miners operating on their claims.
“What we found particularly helpful is that we have artisanal miners working on our claims, whom we work with and use as an exploration vector,” she said. “These guys know rocks better than geologists. They’re fantastic.”
Kavango has been able to map the artisanal miners’ shafts and link their observations with underground geological data to better understand how the mineralised system is forming in the area.
Gorman suggested this approach could be scaled up nationally. “We have all these pockets of very important information. If you could join all the artisanal knowledge together into some kind of mapping system, that would be extremely interesting,” she said.
The funding challenge and VFEX solution
“For any junior miner, the number one challenge is funding,” Gorman said. “Prior to our VFEX listing, it wasn’t super easy to raise capital for exploration in Zimbabwe from the London markets.”
The company listed on the VFEX by way of introduction in September 2025, with trading commencing on September 8, 2025, while retaining its primary listing on the London Stock Exchange.
“The VFEX listing serves as a secondary venue to broaden investor access, while the company maintains its primary LSE listing,” VFEX Head of Markets Robert Mubaiwa confirmed at the time.
The listing proved hugely successful. Kavango raised just under US$14 million — predominantly from pension funds. Today, the company boasts 16 pension fund investors, several asset managers, and a significant number of retail investors investing anywhere from US$100 to US$10,000.
“We’ve been really pleased that we’ve been able to bring that capital together to help develop what we’re doing at Hillside,” Gorman said.
Building a local investor base
The VFEX listing has opened up Kavango to Zimbabwean investors, who can now hold shares locally, trade them on the VFEX, or transfer them to the LSE through the branch register control account. Key allocations included shares to a consortium of local pension funds, Zimbabwean retail investors, and employee share awards distributed among staff.
Kavango currently produces around 2 kilogrammes of gold per month from small-scale operations at Hillside. The company is now focused on commissioning a 50-tonne-per-day pilot carbon-in-pulp gold processing plant at Bill’s Luck Mine, expected in the second quarter of 2026, with plans to scale up to 250 tonnes per day.
Gorman acknowledged that international investors have had preconceptions about Zimbabwe but said the company is working hard to dispel these alongside other players such as Caledonia.
“Investors are always worried about regulatory uncertainty,” she said. “What we have found is we listed on the VFEX in September of last year, and it has been hugely successful.”
Gorman echoed earlier calls from the Geological Society of Zimbabwe for better regional geological understanding and data accessibility. She noted that Kavango is participating in the East African Exploration Initiative to conduct large-scale mineral systems work.
“You can understand what’s happening at a small scale by first understanding what’s happening at the regional scale, and that is how you will find your large-scale mines,” she said.
The company hopes to reach free cash flow at Hillside and then use that to develop its larger exploration projects through traditional methods, including soil sampling, trenching, and drilling.
