Mineral review – Silver

Kawu Musa Idris-Idah, 13th April 2026

This series provides brief insights into minerals found in the “solar system” ecosystem.

Conductors are critical to electricity generation. Silver is the best metallic conductor, but costs more than copper. Copper is also more abundant than silver. Albeit these factors, doses of silver are nonetheless used in panels (busbars) and inverters (switches, relays, circuit breakers, diodes).

Silver is obtained directly from argentite or as a by-product of mining metals like copper, lead, zinc and gold. The metallic ore is extracted from the sub-surface and crushed to release the silver-containing bits. Via chemicals and air bubbles, valuable minerals (including silver) are removed as concentrate. Subsequently, concentrate is heated at high temperatures and metals separated from the concentrate, at their appropriate separation temperatures.

Post-extraction, refining is required to obtain pure silver. The most common ore from which silver is produced, is lead. Molten zinc is added to lead ore, silver then sticks to zinc and forms a layer that could be removed from the mixture. Electrorefining is the last step where electricity is used to achieve pure silver (exceeding 99.9%).

Morocco (179 / 266 tons), Eritrea (53 / 83 tons), South Africa (44 tons) and Botswana (35 / 95 tons) are the top producers of silver in Africa. The two figures provided are from primary and secondary sources. The convention: primary / secondary. The difference noted between both sources results from the complexity in tracking silver produced as a by-product. Nevertheless, the key message is that African countries don’t rank amongst the top ten producers of silver.

The table below provides the highest-ranking silver producers, as per USGS 2026.