Dr. Thomas Benson

Thacker Pass Veterans Lead Dual-District Lithium Push with Built-In Cash Flow Model

• Top takeaway Benson's stated key takeaway for investors is that the Adzope area, now framed as a district, contains multiple spodumene trends in ground that had never been drilled before Lithium Africa started, and sits within roughly 100 kilometres of the port of Abidjan through which Malian lithium is shipped.
• He argues a stockpile at Springbok could bring non-dilutive capital into the company to self-fund exploration, contrasting this with Thacker Pass, where he says 15 years of involvement between his PhD and construction has still produced no revenue.
• He wants to explore the Adzope district from the outside in with a more academic, AI-assisted approach and says exploration spending should be aimed at value rather than drilling for its own sake.
• As of the September 17, 2026 interview, he says the roughly 2,000-metre RC campaign at Adzope was a little over halfway complete with results expected soon.
• He credits the company's strength to two board appointments made during 2026 - John Kanalises and Ernie Ortiz - and to the exploration team, describing them as an A+ lithium team.

Benson argues a dual-district portfolio, South Africa and Côte d'Ivoire, concentrates capital where exploration can move fastest. Adzopé's second spodumene trend, the hard-rock lithium mineral these programs target, grades up to 1.98% lithium oxide in previously undrilled ground. At Springbok, an existing five-hectare mining permit plus a drillable stockpile could fund exploration without selling new shares. Springbok drilling is widening beyond a maiden resource to prove out an emerging spodumene district across the property. Benson points to a 15-year Thacker Pass track record and two new board additions as the team's strongest credential.

New CEO Dr. Thomas Benson on Positioning Lithium Africa for the Rebound

• Top takeaway He argues the lithium cycle has bottomed and is swinging back up (as of July 2026), and that exploring counter-cyclically — consolidating distressed ground and raising money in the slump — is what positions the company for the rebound.
• He champions a low-cost exploration method for soil-covered terrain: geochemistry, geochronology and outcrop studies before any drilling, combined with machine learning, to de-risk each drill hole.
• He cites a PhD in lithium and work behind several of the largest global lithium resources, including Thacker Pass, as the technical basis for his strategy.
• He argues Africa is underexplored — around 5% of global lithium exploration spend despite hosting far more of the resources — and that being local, with African teams, is the key advantage.
• He says his focus is drilling strong lithium intercepts to drive shareholder value, pointing to near-term catalysts: Azope and Springbok drill results and the sale of the Springbok stockpile.

New CEO Dr. Thomas Benson argues that buying distressed ground through the lithium slump gave Lithium Africa district-scale African positions just as prices rebound. Cheap pre-drill work like geochemistry and geochronology (dating rocks) is used to de-risk expensive drilling across soil-covered West African ground. Both anchor projects are drilling now: a 2,000-metre RC (reverse circulation) campaign at Adzopé, Côte d'Ivoire, and 3,500 metres at Springbok, South Africa. A permitted past-producing mine at Springbok holds a 30,000-tonne spodumene stockpile at 1.6% lithium oxide, a potential non-dilutive (no new shares) funding source. Africa draws roughly 5% of global lithium exploration spend despite hosting far more of the resource — the gap Benson's local-teams strategy targets.