At Electra Mining Africa 2026, one of the continent’s biggest mining technology expos, held in Johannesburg this week, there was no shortage of machines offering a glimpse of what the future of mining could look like.
There were electric vehicles, control systems, digital displays and the kind of industrial technology that can make a mine feel less like a collection of people, machines and conveyor belts and more like one enormous computer.
But when I sat down for coffee with Charl Marais, the man helping ABB South Africa, a division of the global electrification and automation giant, push that vision into the continent’s mining industry, the conversation quickly moved away from machines.
It went back to engineering for the ABB Local Business Line Manager, Automation, Process Industries division.
Marais studied electrical engineering at the former Rand Afrikaans University, now the University of Johannesburg, and began his career designing electric motors. He spent years working with the fundamentals of industrial equipment before joining ABB in its high-power rectifier business.
That background shapes his perspective because Marais did not arrive at industrial technology from the world of software. He came to it through the machines themselves.
“I really started in the, let’s call it, engineering-intensive sort of discipline,” he told TechCabal.
His early career was rooted in understanding how electrical machines worked. At ABB, he began encountering control systems and became fascinated by what happened when engineering, power electronics, and machine control came together.
According to Marais, the machines did the work, and automation could unlock their potential. Now, with digital technologies and artificial intelligence layered on top, the possibilities are becoming much bigger.
That journey sits at the heart of Marais’ view of where African mining is heading. The biggest change coming to the industry may not be that mines become filled with robots. It could be that the people who work in those mines increasingly stop standing next to the machines they operate.
That distinction carries weight in Africa, where mining is not simply an industry. It is a major source of jobs, exports, tax revenues and economic activity, while governments across the continent continue to face enormous pressure to create employment.
The question, then, is not whether African mining can be automated. It already can. The real question is what happens to the people when it does.
Moving people away from danger
For Marais, the answer starts with safety.
He sees technology as a way to remove workers from the most dangerous parts of a mine while allowing them to continue applying their knowledge and experience.
“I believe we have, as human beings, as the human race, the responsibility to take people out of dangerous environments where their lives are threatened,” he said.
His vision is of workers operating from safer locations rather than physically standing next to equipment or working underground. “The technology becomes the barrier between the worker and the hazard,” he stated.
People remain part of the process, but their relationship with the machinery changes.
Mining is no stranger to the anxiety that machines could take jobs, but Marais sees an opportunity to use technology to improve safety and productivity while making better use of the people who understand the operation.
The bigger problem, he says, is that many mines already have sophisticated systems but lack the connections between them.
A grinding circuit may run on one programmable logic controller, a concentrator on another system and a substation on its own control platform. Each may work well on its own, but the mine does not necessarily have a single view of what is happening across the operation.
Marais contends that bringing those systems together is where the real value lies.
“We are trying, also through experience in other industries that are maybe more advanced in this automation journey, to convince industry that having a digital control system (DCS), that overarches your entire value chain unlocks so much capability from an automation perspective.”
In simpler terms, he says, the mine needs to behave less like a collection of separate machines and more like one connected operation.
A bottleneck in a crushing circuit, for example, should not be viewed only as a problem in one part of the plant. A connected system can show how it affects energy consumption, production and costs across the wider operation.
That visibility also gives artificial intelligence (AI) something far more useful to work with. Instead of generating answers in isolation, it can help operators identify patterns, optimise processes and make decisions using information from across the mine.
This, Marais maintains, is where the next technological leap will happen. Not necessarily in a robot walking across a stage, but in the digital systems quietly connecting the machines, processes and people running the mine.
Africa cannot afford to wait
At Electra Mining Africa, ABB showcased that convergence under the theme “Powering Leaner. Driving Cleaner. Enabling the Future of Mining.”
The company demonstrated technologies spanning electrification, control and digitalisation, including substations, switchgear and SCADA systems, software platforms that allow operators to monitor and control industrial equipment remotely. The objective is to help mining companies produce more, consume less energy, improve reliability and reduce their environmental impact.
But for Marais, Africa’s difficult operating environment is an argument for embracing these technologies rather than waiting. Many mines contend with unreliable electricity, ageing infrastructure, skills shortages and intense pressure to control costs. Those constraints can make sophisticated digital systems sound like something better suited to richer mining jurisdictions.
Marais sees it differently. “I believe it is. I think it’s even more important in Africa,” he said.
The continent’s mineral wealth gives it little choice. Copper, cobalt and other critical minerals are becoming increasingly important to the global energy transition, with countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Zambia already central to their supply.
The world needs those resources, but getting them out of the ground safely, efficiently and sustainably is becoming harder. For African mining companies, the technology conversation is therefore not simply about buying the newest equipment. It is about extracting more value from the infrastructure, machinery and expertise they already have.
ABB has a substantial installed base across sub-Saharan Africa, with work in countries including the DRC, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Namibia. The company also relies on channel partners to maintain and support equipment in markets where maintaining a large physical presence would be difficult or expensive.
That existing infrastructure could become particularly important as mines begin connecting systems that previously operated separately. Marais’ vision is not necessarily about ripping everything out and starting again. It is about making what is already there work harder.
“It’s about interconnectedness,” he explained to TechCabal. “Because once everything is interconnected, you have full control and you can understand what the effect of a certain bottleneck in your crushing circuit might have on your energy consumption.”
In a way, that mirrors his own career. He started with physical machinery, moved into power electronics and control systems, and now works at the intersection of digitalisation and AI. Each layer did not make the previous one irrelevant. It made it more useful.
That may be the more realistic way to think about AI in African mining. The technology will not suddenly arrive and transform a mine overnight. It will sit on top of decades of engineering, industrial equipment, control systems and human expertise, with the advantage going to companies that can connect those layers.
The jobs question
And the human being remains at the centre of that system.
Marais talks about remote operation centres where workers can monitor and control processes without being underground or next to dangerous equipment. The operator still makes the decisions, but with far more information at hand.
That is perhaps the most interesting part of his vision of the modern mine. It is not a mine without people, but one where people have greater visibility and control over what is happening across the operation. “The guys who built these fantastic mines in Zambia, in the DRC, have a responsibility to bring those critical minerals to us,” he said.
Technology, in this context, becomes a way of meeting that responsibility with fewer injuries, better productivity and more efficient use of energy and resources. But there is still a difficult social question hanging over all of this. If technology makes mines more productive, what happens to employment?
It would be naïve to pretend technology will have no effect on jobs. Some roles will change, some will disappear, and new technical roles will emerge.
But Marais’ point is that the conversation should not begin and end with the number of jobs a machine can replace. It should also ask what kinds of jobs people can do when machines take over the most dangerous and repetitive parts of the work. That is a very different future, and perhaps a more useful one for Africa.
The real AI revolution in mining may therefore not look like a humanoid robot walking through a mine. It may look like a worker sitting in a control room, thousands of kilometres away, watching a connected operation through a digital interface and using years of experience to make a decision that keeps production moving and another worker out of harm’s way.
When I first met Marais at Electra Mining, it was easy to focus on the machines around us. After our conversation, I found myself thinking more about the engineer who started his career designing motors and gradually moved towards the systems that make those machines smarter.
His career mirrors the evolution of industrial technology itself, from understanding the machine, to controlling it, connecting it and, eventually, making it intelligent. For African mining, the next step is not simply buying smarter machines. It is making the machines, systems and people already inside the mine work as one.
As our coffee came to an end, I kept thinking about where Marais’ own journey had started, with the design of electric motors. Decades later, he is talking about mines where those machines can be connected, controlled and made intelligent from a distance.
The future he describes is not a silent mine emptied of people. It is a control room where an operator can sit hundreds of metres or even hundreds of kilometres from the pit, watching the operation unfold on screens, making decisions in real time while machines do the dangerous work below.
The machines go deeper. The people move further away from the danger.
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