Second vice foreign minister Kang In-sun held a series of bilateral talks Wednesday in South Africa to discuss ways to boost cooperation with African countries in the area of critical minerals. 

According to Seoul’s foreign ministry on Wednesday, Kang held separate bilateral talks with senior officials from Tanzania, South Africa and Zimbabwe in Cape Town on the sidelines of Mining Indaba, the largest African mining conference. 

In the meetings, Kang introduced the government’s cooperation policy on key minerals and proposed to continue developing the cooperative relationships established at the inaugural Korea-Africa Summit in Seoul in June.

In response, the officials from the three African nations expressed their gratitude for an important opportunity for bilateral cooperation in the critical mineral sector, vowing to promote cooperation in that area and various others. 

Kang chaired the first Korea-Africa Critical Minerals Dialogue on Tuesday in Cape Town, South Africa, with some 100 people in attendance, including government delegates and officials from key mining agencies and companies from eleven African countries.