Dr Alan Woolley, a research associate of the Natural History Museum London (NHM), is a world renowned carbonatite specialist who first worked in Malawi during the 1960s. Dr Woolley has been a supportive advisor to the Mkango Resources team since 2010, assisting with the training and mentoring of local geologists and field team. Given his experience within the region and with the host deposit rock, his expertise and advisory work has aided in the diligent progression of the Songwe Hill project.

Dr Swinden is a graduate of Dalhousie University, and Memorial University of Newfoundland (PhD, Earth Sciences, 1988). He has extensive experience in both public and private sectors in mineral exploration, research and management. In 2010, Dr Swinden founded Swinden Geoscience Consultants Ltd., providing geoscientific services and advice to the mineral exploration sector and policy support to the public sector. He is a specialist in the geology and geochemistry of rare earth elements and rare metals and has recent experience exploring for REE deposits in Namibia (where he was part of the discovery team for the Lofdal deposit) and Malawi. Dr Swinden is a geological advisor for Mkango and co-authored the 2012 NI43-101 Technical Report.

Between 1970 and 1979 he explored for base metals, precious metals, and mineral fuels in a wide variety of geological environments in Canada and the US. Between 1979 and 1987, he worked as a research geologist and project leader for the Newfoundland Geological Survey and the Geological Survey of Canada, and then for nine years managed the Newfoundland Geological Survey’s Mineral Deposits Section while also carrying out an extensive research program directed mainly at Appalachian mineral deposits. In 1996, he moved to Nova Scotia as Director of the Nova Scotia geological survey, and from 1998 to 2010 served as Executive Director of the Minerals and Energy Branch where he was the Senior government official responsible for minerals programs, policies and legislation in Nova Scotia.

Dr Swinden is a Fellow and former President of the Geological Association of Canada, a Fellow of the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum, a Fellow of the Society of Economic Geologists and a member of the Association of Professional Geoscientists of Nova Scotia. He is an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Earth Sciences at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he provides teaching support in the area of economic geology.