The Maiwut Grant lies 200 km to the southeast of Paloich. It contains no documentary evidence of mineral occurrences or past exploitation for minerals or metals. There is however evidence that there is an occurrence of gold mineralization in Maiwut.[1] Also the Maiwut Grant has the geological features to contain a sedimentary manganese deposit. It is largely underlain by the same sedimentary Umm Ruwaba Formation, which contains the Paloich Manganese Project, discussed above. Similarly the sediments of the Maiwut Grant have the Ethiopian Highlands as their provenance. They may be deposited in what is probably the ill-defined terminus of the western branch of the Great African Rift. As such its depositional environment conforms to the genetic features required for sedimentary manganese, namely a shallow intra-continental marine basin, which could have islands of higher ground, areas sheltered from turbulent sedimentation, as well as the chemical conditions of an oxidation – reduction interface necessary to precipitate the manganese from solution or suspension.
Indeed a series of gravel samples taken by the geologists of the Production Unit of the Ministry of Defence contain manganese grades of plus 5000 ppm in one particular area, which we are still to investigate.