Kaoko Metals (ASX: KAO) used its presence at the Africa Down Under conference in Perth to highlight early progress at its flagship Chalkos Copper-Silver Project in Namibia, with the explorer now focused on expanding its drilling campaign after receiving strong interest from investors and industry participants.

Africa Down Under, held annually in Perth, has grown into one of the largest mining exploration conferences focused on the African continent, and it regularly serves as a showcase for ASX-listed juniors working across African jurisdictions.

Speaking to HotCopper at the conference, Kaoko founder and chief geologist Callum Standing said the company had moved quickly from its May listing into on-the-ground exploration, completing mapping and sampling before advancing to diamond drilling.

The first two holes at Chalkos have already returned approximately 50 metres and 60 metres of mineralisation respectively, providing the company with an early indication of the potential of the system it is testing. Intersections of this scale at such an early stage of a drilling program are typically what explorers use to justify expanded follow-up campaigns, though the width of mineralised intervals alone does not indicate grade or economic viability until assay results and further drilling confirm the system's continuity.

Standing noted that the response at Africa Down Under had been particularly notable, with mining companies, funds and brokers taking an interest in the company's early exploration results and examining samples brought from Namibia to better understand the geology behind the drilling.

A key theme emerging at this year's conference has been growing investor appetite for Namibia as an exploration jurisdiction. Namibia is an established mining country — a major global producer of uranium and a significant source of diamonds — and its northwestern Kaokoland region, where Kaoko's ground sits, forms part of a geological setting prospective for copper and silver mineralisation.

"I think people are waking up to the fact that Namibia is such a fluent jurisdiction to the expiration and the fact that we can get on the ground so quickly and execute an exploration program where we can put inside access and start drilling, it's pretty incredible," Standing said.

Alongside the drilling, the company plans to continue mapping and sampling across its broader tenement package before using the Phase 1 results to determine where follow-up drilling should be concentrated.

For Kaoko, the next phase of exploration will therefore be about moving beyond the first indications of mineralisation and establishing just how extensive the Chalkos system could be, with assay results from the initial holes and the placement of subsequent drill holes among the practical milestones investors typically watch at this stage of an explorer's lifecycle.