Backing Winners: Why Brendan Borg sees West Africa as lithium’s next frontier

Backing Winners is Stockhead’s regular recap of executives with a solid track record looking to replicate the success of their previous roles.

Today we hear from Brendan Borg, non-executive director at Chariot Corporation and non-executive director at Leo Lithium.

Brendan Borg had invested a little under $175,000 of his own capital in Chariot Corporation (ASX:CC9), more than enough to highlight his confidence in the company, before joining the board in August 2025.

The move reflects his conviction that the company’s newly acquired Nigerian projects, despite never seeing a drill hole, offer compelling upside given their proven artisanal mining history and location to established export routes.

Borg, a seasoned geologist who helped guide Leo Lithium’s (ASX:LLL) Goulamina project in Mali to a US$342.7m sale to Chinese giant Ganfeng, sees striking parallels between Chariot’s Nigerian assets and the geological setup that delivered success in West Africa’s emerging lithium corridor.

With over 25 years of mining and exploration experience, including a significant chunk of time navigating West African geology and helping deliver one of the region’s most success lithium developments, Borg believes the surface has “only been scratched” in terms of discovery potential across the region.

READ NOW: Chariot picks up four hard-rock lithium projects in Nigeria

We caught up with Borg to ask him why he decided to move up to a non-executive director role at Chariot and the re-rate potential he sees in the lithium junior as the market turns.

Why did you decide to make the move to Chariot?

I had met some of their management at the Indaba Conference about 18 months ago, but attention caught my eye recently when they announced the Nigerian acquisition.

At the time, I approached managing director Shanthar Pathmanathan and said I would like to participate in the capital raising they were doing.

That’s how I got involved as a shareholder and from that, it led to some discussions around me joining the board and I was happy to do so given that I’d invested in the company and also given what I think I can bring in terms of my lithium experience, early stage project experience and know-how in taking projects through from nothing to producing mines.

And most importantly, mines in the West Africa region, I think that’s a rare set of circumstances.

When I put money into a company, I look at what the valuation is and the valuation on which the company entered the projects was quite attractive to me.

Another reason why I liked the four projects is they are well located within Nigeria and none of them have ever had drilling but they’ve all had some form of artisanal production.

To me that’s a quite a unique combination of  cheap valuation, good location within the country, under-explored geological terrains and some historical production which actually proves that there’s definitely going to be economic lithium there in terms of the grades and things like that to me, form a very good starting point from which to develop a project.

Even at this early stage, does the newly acquired Nigerian portfolio show signs of following a trajectory like the Goulamina mine?

All four of the projects have already seen some limited mining by artisanal miners, so small-scale mining where product has been exported to China.

In many ways, they are already several steps ahead of where Leo Lithium started at the Goulamina project but the other side of that is that none of these projects have ever seen a single drill hole.

As far as developing a larger scale project goes, they’re right at the very beginning but the fact that they have already seen limited small-scale production actually proves that there’s already something that comes out of those mines that is desirable to the Chinese processors.

The other interesting point about the project that I like is their location within Nigeria. So these projects are all located in the southwest portion of the country, which means that the distance to port is not too arduous.

These projects are about 400km from Lagos, which is the port from which any future production would be shipped out of.

From your point of view, why do you think West Africa is a hot region for lithium exploration and development?

I think the geology in West Africa is extremely prospective when it comes to the potential to be able to find more lithium resources.

China is the obvious destination at the moment for most lithium that goes into processing, but I think lithium processing will start to develop in places like Europe and West Africa is very close to Europe for raw supply.

The set up we had at Leo Lithium working with Ganfeng on Goulamina showed what can be achievable in Africa with Australian-listed companies working in corporation with Chinese groups and I think that with Chariot, we will be able to undertake similar activities.

We will have Chinese offtakers for this material and I don’t see any impediment with being able to do that.

In terms of developing further lithium resources, I see a lot of potential in West Africa – the way I see look at it, the geology that you see in West Africa is quite similar to what you get in Brazil.

Once upon a time, those two geological regions were linked and right next to each other before they split apart.

What I’m looking at in West African reflects the potential to develop a similar setup of lithium deposits that are related to the same geology as in Brazil.

Brazil is far more developed with many more producing mines than what we see in West Africa, but the rocks are the same and although exploration is still in its infancy, I think the surface has only been scratched in terms of the possibilities for discovery in West Africa.

What is it like dealing with the Nigerian government compared to Mali where Goualamina is located?

I guess a country like Mali is probably at the more difficult end of West Africa. I expect that Nigeria will be a lot easier to work in.

For a start it’s English-speaking, which helps straight away, whereas obviously Mali’s French-speaking.

Nigeria has a democratically elected government, whereas Mali has a military government at the moment.

It’s also landlocked so to get material exported you have to go across an international border and export it out through Cote d’Ivoire, which adds an extra degree of difficulty.

How will you use your experience in Africa to help guide Chariot forward?

I think there’s two fronts. On the technical front, I’ve spent a lot of time in lithium so will be able to offer some insights on that as well as how to operate in West Africa and how to avoid some of the pitfalls that I’ve seen in the previous roles that I have had.

It can be a challenging jurisdiction to work in but hopefully I can lend some of my experiences with my previous work to Chariot’s board, who of course are relatively new into the African space having previously had most of their key projects in the United States.

At Stockhead we tell it like it is. While Chariot Corporation is a Stockhead advertiser, it did not sponsor this article.