The Archaean schist belts of Western Liberia are generally elongated parallel to a regional east to east-south-east trend of intense crustal scale shearing, marked by widespread zones of mylonitic and cataclastic rocks. Within the folded and sheared schist-belt lithologies, disseminated sulphide mineralisation is ubiquitous, making them highly prospective for gold and base metals. Soil geochemical anomalies and artisanal workings suggest strike extensions exist to the King George Larjor and Weaju deposits, both are open at depth so exploration might easily lead to the current resource estimates being substantially increased. Remote sensing techniques such as satellite imagery and airborne geophysical surveys also demonstrate that the shear zones that host KGL and Weaju can be traced across tens or in some cases hundreds of kilometres. This is comparable with the controlling structures of major gold camps hosted by similar age rocks elsewhere in the world such as the major fold belts in Mali and Ghana, as well as Tanzania.

• Description: Quartz with or without carbonate (calcite, ankerite, or siderite) veins and more rarely stockworks and zones of silicic and (or) carbonate replacement containing native gold, auriferous pyrite or arsenopyrite, electrum, and more rarely gold in telluride minerals.

• Host Rocks: Metamorphosed, highly-altered, supracrustal rocks; e.g., most commonly in tholeiitic basalts, komatiites or their volcanoclastic or subvolcanic equivalents; less commonly in felsic volcanic rocks, greywacke and conglomerate, tonalite-granodiorite-quartz monzonites or syenitic stocks, plugs and dikes (including subvolcanic intrusions). Deposits that contain both disseminated and fracture-controlled mineralisation constitute "porphyry gold" deposits (Franklin and Thorpe, 1982). Most deposits occur in greenschist-facies metamorphic terrain.

• Typical deposits: Dome and Pamour mines at Timmins, Campbell mine at Red Lake, and Kerr Addison mine, Kirkland Lake camp, Ontario; Sigma mine, Quebec, Canada; Con and Giant Yellowknife mines, N.W.T.; Norseman, Kalgoorlie, Golden Mile, Australia; Ropes mine, Michigan, U.S.A. Porphyry-associated deposits at Camflo, Barnat, Hollinger, Lamaque, Perron, McIntyre, and Renabie, Canada.

• Distinguishing features: Native gold is most commonly associated with small amounts of disseminated pyrite or pyrrhotite in well-developed quartz veins or stockworks with persistent sericite-carbonate alteration haloes in highly deformed, Archaean host rocks that have been regionally metamorphosed to low- or medium-grades.

• Relative importance: These deposits account for the second largest amount of gold production of any major mineral deposit type after the Witwatersrand-type paleo-conglomerate-hosted deposits of South Africa (Groves and Foster, 1991). They are found in every major Archaean craton.

• Other exploration guides: Archaean age; major shear zones generally within 5 km of the deposits; greenschist or, less commonly, amphibolite regional metamorphic grade; host rocks with high iron content; presence of thin komatiitic or high-Mg basalt units; molasse-type sediments indicating fault-related basin formed during shear-zone deformation; presence of silicified, carbonatised, K-enriched, pyritised zones; fuchsite may be a guide in ultramafic rocks.

The USGS grade-tonnage models indicate that half of the studied Archaean gold deposits contain up to 1.1 million tonnes of ore and that 10% contain 13 million tonnes or more of ore. Likewise half the studied examples have average grades of greater than 8.5 g/t Au
ten percent have grades of more than 17 g/t Au. The largest (in terms of tonnes of ore) deposits are summarised below.

SUMMARY OF THE LARGEST ARCHAEAN GOLD DEPOSITS

Deposit	Location	Tonnes (t)	Grade (g/t)	Contained Gold (oz)
Kalgoorlie (Golden Mile etc)	Western Australia	119,400,000	10.7	41,100,000
Hollinger-McIntyre	Ontario, Canada	100,900,000	9.9	32,100,000
Kolar	India	45,400,000	17.8	26,000,000
Kirkland Lake	Ontario, Canada	49,300,000	14.7	23,300,000
Cambell	Red Lake Ontario, Canada	26,200,000	16.7	14,100,000
Dome-Paymaster-Preston	Ontario, Canada	40,600,000	9.5	12,400,000
Geita	Tanzania	91,600,000	4.1	12,100,000
Bulyanhulu	Tanzania	~23,500,000	~11.7	8,800,000
Sigma-Lamaque	Quebec, Canada	41,000,000	6.7	8,800,000
Malalartic-East Malartic-Canadian	Quebec, Canada	45,300,000	4.7	6,800,000
Broulan-Hallnor-Pamour	Ontario, Canada	28,300,000	5.4	4,900,000
Big Bell	Western Australia	24,200,000	3.5	2,700,000
Paddy's Flat (Meekatharra)	Western Australia	14,100,000	4.25	2,000,000

The prolific nature of Archaean deposits is well demonstrated. Most of these Archaean gold deposits and districts have had the benefit of a long history of exploration and development during which additional deposits and oreshoots are steadily found as the geological controls on mineralisation become better understood. The Liberian deposits discovered so far by Mano show potential for increased resources in strike and depth extensions and their broad similarity to better known Archaean gold camps indicates that, with time, other deposits will also be discovered.

Eastern Liberia contains the southern extensions of the Birimian belts of eastern Ivory Coast, which host the profitable gold mine of Ity. Ubiquitous zones of major crustal-scale shearing, with a strong strike-slip component cut the outcrop. In central Liberia, there is a transition zone where Archaean and Birimian age rocks alternate, separated by shear zones. Widespread artisanal mining of gold in lateritic soils, most famously at Bukon Gedeh, involves several thousand miners. The type of mineralisation has led to comparisons with laterite-based mines in Ghana and the Dinguiraye and Siguiri deposits in Guinea, the latter now being mined by Kenor and Ashanti respectively.

The early stage at which Mano entered Liberia enabled the selection of licences based purely on their geological potential to host large primary gold deposits and/or diamond deposits, without the usual constraints of limited availability of good ground, which is a characteristic feature of more mature exploration areas.

Licence selection was made following an assessment of the gold potential of the whole of the region based on evidence from geology, geo-morphology, tectonics and the position and nature of artisanal workings. From a total of some twelve known gold producing areas, three areas in Liberia stood out as having exceptional potential for hosting multiple gold targets and thus defining a major new gold province. All these three known gold producing areas contain schist belts re-folded and strongly sheared within major, crustal scale, strike slip shear zones. The distribution of local gold workings closely mirrors the structure in the schist belt with workings invariably being concentrated within potential structural trap sites within the schist belts. The areas are the:

1. Bea Mountains and Silver hills schist belts of Archaean age;
2. Kpo Range schist belt also of Archaean age;
3. Bukon Gedeh area, extending through into Maryland and the Ivory Coast and associated with a crustal scale shear zone considered to be of Birimian age.

Four permits, the Bea Mountains, Kpo Range, Tawlokhen and Krohnwodoke permits, were selected to target these areas. The Zwedhru permit targeted other areas with similar geology and where high grade gold mineralisation had been reported.

Target selection within the permits has been based on seeking to identify prospects capable of making rapid progress towards demonstrating mineable potential. A regional reconnaissance programme conducted across all the company's permits identified six gold prospects for immediate detailed evaluation, and work is progressing on five of these in western Liberia.

The work programme includes satellite image interpretation, evaluation of regional geophysics, geological and geochemical traversing and geological mapping, as appropriate.

In Guinea, Mano's gold permits at Missamana and Gueliban target a complex area of rotational shear zones and folds at the intersection of two major shear zone systems along the major WNW trending sheared contact zone between the Birimian schist belt rocks to the north and the mixed gneissic zone of Birimian and Archaean age to the south. Along this zone, major thrusting of the Archaean over the Birimian to the north is combined with a major component of sinistral strike-slip movement. This area of intersection thus constitutes one of the major gold targets in the Birimian of Guinea.

In Sierra Leone, three gold exploration licences (Lake Sonfon, Nimini and South Pampana) target areas of complex tectonic structures, associated with major shear zone development in Archaean terrain. They coincide with the richest traditional areas of artisanal gold workings in Sierra Leone. Hence all three permits are considered to have the potential to host gold deposits significantly larger than the two known gold deposits in the country, at Baomahun and Komahun. No exploration activity took place in Sierra Leone between mid-1997 and early 2002 as all of the Company's Licences had been under a state of force majeure. Mano's exploration activities in Sierra Leone resumed in February 2002.

November 2000