The legal services industry across Africa is expanding to meet the growing needs of sectors such as mining, energy, and infrastructure development. As African economies diversify, the demand for specialized legal expertise has risen, especially in countries rich in natural resources. The mining and construction sectors face intricate regulatory frameworks, requiring lawyers who can overcome intricate legal, environmental, and social issues. With increasing international interest in Africa’s critical minerals, legal professionals are now at the core of shaping the continent’s economic future, adapting to the growing business environment and regulatory requirements.
Methembeni Moyo, the Head of Africa Practice, is a key figure in shaping this legal space. His leading approach is marked by a strong focus on building relationships and a deep understanding of the multifaceted legal challenges faced by clients across various African jurisdictions. Methembeni’s approach combines legal expertise with personal experience in the mining sector, allowing him to view matters from his clients’ perspectives. He has successfully positioned himself as a multi-jurisdictional lawyer, developing his ability to serve clients in Southern Africa and beyond. His leadership prioritizes human connections, ensuring that solutions are legally sound and practically aligned with clients’ goals.
NSDV Law, a firm specializing in mining, environmental, construction, and energy law, has positioned itself as a prominent player in Africa’s legal sector. The firm’s broad expertise and reach across various African countries allow it to offer comprehensive legal services tailored to the needs of industries such as mining and infrastructure. By advising clients on regulatory compliance, dispute resolution, and business transactions, NSDV supports the growth and development of significant sectors in Africa. As demand for legal services continues to increase, the firm remains at the top of advising on domestic and cross-border issues.
Let’s explore Methembeni’s inventive leadership journey in Africa’s legal sector:
Expanding Legal Services Across Africa
During Methembeni’s gap year in 2007, he and his father tried their hand at small-scale gold mining. He gained first-hand experience in applying for a prospecting right and a block of gold claims. Little did he know that a decade later, he would become a mining lawyer.
That season taught him valuable lessons about the risks and potential rewards in the mining sector. He cherishes those lessons as they help him understand clients’ perspectives and pressures on a slightly more personal level.
Although he studied law in South Africa, he was admitted to practice law in his home country, Zimbabwe. After practicing law in Zimbabwe for about three years, he moved to live and work in South Africa in 2019.
Having practiced mining law in two major Southern African jurisdictions, he started to consider himself a multi-jurisdictional lawyer who could assist clients throughout Southern Africa. Joining NSDV, a specialist mining, environmental, construction, and energy law firm, gave him the platform to continue to grow his service offering to other African jurisdictions.
NSDV has now advised clients in various mining transactions, regulatory and compliance, and dispute resolution matters in jurisdictions such as Angola, Botswana, the DRC, Eswatini, Mali, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
Leading Business Development in Africa
Whenever he is at a conference or networking event, he introduces himself as a lawyer by day and a salesman by night because that’s basically what he does.
He is a senior mining and construction lawyer. In South Africa, he specializes in front-end and back-end construction law. He assists clients with drafting and negotiating complex construction contracts, whether bespoke or based on standard forms such as the FIDIC and NEC suite of contracts. He also represents clients in adjudications, arbitrations, and High Court dispute resolution matters arising from a broad range of construction and commercial disputes.
On the African continent, he primarily assists clients with various mining regulatory and compliance matters, including the acquisition of exploration/prospecting rights, the acquisition and maintenance of mining rights, environmental and ESG compliance, and assisting clients with marketing and trading in minerals. On the business development front, he heads NSDV’s Africa practice, and his role is to assist the firm and its clients in doing business on the African continent.
Balancing Stakeholder Needs in Mining
According to Methembeni, the mining and metals sector is a highly regulated sector. In Southern Africa, it is the most important sector and accounts for most of the region’s exports. The mining and metals sector is under constant scrutiny by various stakeholders such as government authorities, communities, and trade unions, and recently, with the new scramble for Africa’s critical minerals, even international diplomatic missions have paid close attention to the mining and metals sector. As a result, NSDV Law’s mining clients operate in an environment where they are frequently challenged to juggle competing needs from a broad spectrum of stakeholders.
Therefore, to provide high-impact and sustainable value to clients in the mining and metals sector, human relationships are vital and essential for leading a team in this industry. Methembeni’s leadership style places a premium on relationships.
Although there is always a place for formal legal drafting (especially in formal legal processes such as transactions and disputes), nothing beats a phone call or a face-to-face meeting. That human interaction can be the difference maker that helps get buy-in from team members, gets a mining right application that has been stalling approved, or helps protect a client from being slapped with a punitive mining royalty.
In a nutshell, he is a firm believer in NSDV Law’s “people over paper” mantra.
Adapting to Varied Mining Environments
Being multi-cultural and a consummate networker has helped Methembeni succeed in the mining sector. He did not intentionally set out to be a multi-jurisdictional lawyer. However, once he had been exposed to working in more than one African jurisdiction, he never looked back.
He now intentionally seeks to build networks and relationships with people from different countries and from diverse backgrounds. It is said that miners go where the rocks are, so as a mining lawyer, one needs to be willing to go wherever the miners go. One needs to be at home in a rural mining community one day and the next day equally comfortable proposing a concise transition minerals policy to regulators.
Aligning Team with Long-Term Vision
In Methembeni’s view, NSDV is very big on communication. No one works in silos, and the various teams literally work in an open-plan office. Externally to clients, the firm prides itself on being relational and easily accessible.
Internally, the firm also tries to live out those principles of being relational and easily accessible. That way, cross-pollination of ideas happens rapidly and organically, ensuring that the team is aligned with the company’s long-term goals and vision.
Staying Updated on Industry Trends
NSDV’s team is always at the coalface of important discussions that shape industry policies and perspectives. Being regularly invited to attend and speak at mining conferences or spearhead industry submissions to regulators on proposed legislative or policy changes helps the firm stay updated on industry trends and technological advancements.
Strategies for Becoming a Mining Sector Leader
Methembeni’s advice to aspiring leaders in the metal and mining industry is to remember that the key to being an “unlocked” (as the Gen Zs would say) mining lawyer is to create one’s own pipeline of work. In a highly competitive legal services market and serving clients in a challenging sector, one simply cannot afford to sit back and expect work to come to them.
Methembeni believes that to be a leader in the metal and mining industry, one needs to be able, for example, to link clients with amazing mining prospects to people with the right capital or link a mining operation that is struggling with grades to someone who has the perfect ore sorting and processing technology to take the deposit to the next level; or one needs to be able to consolidate private sector views on a legislative change that will help the sector reach its full potential and present it to regulators in a respectful but impactful way.
Again, in all these examples of strategies for becoming a mining sector leader, building relationships is key. None of these strategies for becoming a sector leader are possible without building lasting relationships based on trust.
Growth Opportunities in Critical and Transition Minerals
Methembeni believes it is no secret that the global West and the East are stuck in a geopolitical tug-of-war. This has made Africa’s minerals, particularly the critical minerals needed for the green energy transition and defense industries, highly sought after.
NSDV sees these geopolitical developments as a massive growth opportunity. There is a new scramble for Africa’s critical and transition minerals, and NSDV wants to be at the forefront of advising clients on:
- Steering rapidly changing laws as governments try to keep up with the demand and regulate the mining of minerals that, until a decade or so ago, were not in demand.
- The integration of clean energy and mining operations not only as a pathway to net zero but as a way of augmenting power supply from constrained national grids; and
- The appropriate procurement and contracting models for the construction of the necessary rail and port infrastructure needed to transport minerals and metals to markets once they have been mined.
