“Take the worker out of the pit”: How ABB’s Charl Marais sees the future of African mining

At Electra Mining Africa 2026, Charl Marais laid out a vision for the continent’s mines that isn’t about sci-fi robots or silent pits emptied of human workers. By connecting isolated machinery, control systems, and AI platforms into a single intelligent network, ABB is helping operators run hazardous underground operations from control rooms hundreds of kilometres away. In this edition of Coffee With…, PHATHISANI MOYO sits down with Marais to unpack why human expertise—not autonomous machines—wi