Sovereign Mines of Africa : Assay of final batch of results from Phase III drilling at Mandiana

30 September 2014

 Sovereign Mines of Africa PLC
("SMA" or "the Company")
Assay of final batch of results from Phase III drilling at Mandiana

 Sovereign Mines of Africa PLC (AIM:SMA), a gold mining exploration Company with properties in the Republic of Guinea in West Africa, is pleased to announce the assay results of eight Reverse Circulation (RC) drill holes from the Mandiana gold project in the Republic of Guinea. In the Yagbelen Zone, one drill hole, RCY_93_3, intersected a high-grade quartz-vein cutting an interval of four metres averaging 18g/t gold from 87 metres and a second hole, RCY_95_3, cut a broad zone of 27 metres averaging 1.46g/t gold from 43 metres.

John Barry, SMA's Director of Exploration, commented:

"These very encouraging results confirm the impressive grade of high-grade shoots within a broader extensively mineralized envelope. The deep weathering and oxidization to depths of up to 120 metres supports the potential for a low-cost, open-pit bulk mineable resource at the Yagbelen Zone. What is new, is that the potential for a high-grade underground operation should now also be given very serious consideration."

"We always recognised the potential of Mandiana and the real opportunity to discover a multi-million ounce resource. A team from a major international gold mining group who visited the site in June this year were of the opinion that Mandiana has the potential for a Tier 2 gold mine supporting annual production in the range between 200,000 ounces and 500,000 ounces of gold."

In October last year SMA announced a maiden inferred JORC gold resource of 610,000 ounces of gold at an average grade of 1.2 g/t based on only 15,500 metres of drilling and covering only seven percent of the mineralized strike. This relatively early stage milestone compares very favourably with other more advanced gold projects in the region such as Avocet Mining PLC's (AIM:AVM) Yaoure gold project in the Ivory Coast and TrueGold Mining Inc.'s (TSX-V:TGM) Karma gold project in Burkina Faso, when they were at a similar stage of evaluation. With the acquisition of the Mandiana South Concession last November SMA has no less than seven major artisanal areas, which have never ben drill-tested (http://www.sovmines.com/mandiana-magana-maps/).

Samples from the RC drill holes concerned were in storage at our camp at Mandiana, having been drilled as part of the Phase III drilling campaign, but were not assayed as they were not necessary to support the independent estimate of the maiden resource announced in October 2013. Given that operations on the ground will not continue until the risk from the ebola virus in West Africa has passed the Company decided that now would be an appropriate time to have them assayed.

Principal results for the reverse circulation holes are summarized below:

Notes:

1. Composited assays for the above Table were calculated at a cut off grade of 0.3 gpt gold.
2. Mineralised intervals presented above do not represent true widths. All drill holes are inclined 50° WSW except RCW_106 which inclined at 90°. The Company currently interprets the mineralized zones to dip moderately to the northeast but, until structural analysis through measurements of oriented cores has been carried out, geometry cannot be reliably understood.
3. A map showing positions of the drill holes can be viewed on the Company website (http://www.sovmines.com/mandiana-magana-maps/).

The Mandiana property is owned by the Company's subsidiary, Sovereign Mines of Guinea Limited ("SMG"). 20 per cent of SMG is owned by SOGUIPAMI, the Republic of Guinea's state-owned mining firm. The property is located within a few kilometers of the eastern frontier with Mali, 30 kilometres from Hummingbird Resources PLC's (AIM:HUM) Yanfolila development gold project in Mali and only 10 kilometres from Avocet's Tri-K gold project area. Mandiana is the site of extensive artisanal gold mining with more than 9,000 artisanal pits discovered on site to date and prior to SMA's exploration of the area it had never been drilled or evaluated by modern exploration methods.

Given the very challenging market conditions for Junior gold explorers even with high-quality early-stage gold projects, SMA is continuing to seek a strategic partner with the financial resources and commitment required to realize the potential of this very extensive mineralizing system. There are currently several interested parties to whom we have given access to our online Project Dataroom.

Qualified Person

The technical information in this release has been reviewed by John Barry, P.Geo, a Competent or Qualified Person as defined by PERC, JORC and NI 43-101.

Quality Assurance/Quality Control (QA/QC)

Samples are sent to the ALS laboratory in Bamako in Mali. ALS is part of the ALS Group, which is a global leader in the provision of analytical services to the international mining industry. At the lab in Bamako samples were prepared (code Prep 22-2) and then decomposed by fire assay (code Au-AA26) with AAS finish. The entire sample is dried, coarse crushed and pulverized to better than 85 % of the material passing through a 75 micron (Tyler 200 mesh) screen. A split of 250g is then pulverized to better than 85% passing 75 micron and homogenised. A 50g sample is then decomposed by fire assay fusion FA-FUS03 & FA-FUS04 and analysed by atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS).

ALS Chemex has developed and implemented a Quality Management System (QMS) at each of its laboratories. ALS Chemex laboratory operations are covered by ISO 9001:2000 certification for the "provision of assay and geochemical analytical services" by QMI Quality Registrars, and accredited to ISO 17025 standards in various jurisdictions.  All laboratories are operating under the same quality system and use the same standard operating procedures (SOP). : The ALS (Chemex) Laboratory in Bamako is working under a combination of ALS Chemex Vancouver and Johannesburg supervision. At ALS Chemex an internal Quality Control Group coordinates all inter-lab round robin work, and also directs all laboratories to participate in various external proficiency testing programs.

ALS Chemex QA/QC involves the preparation of every 50th sample at the crushing stage and 20th sample at the pulverization stage are tested for fineness by screening. Samples are analysed in batches of 24 which includes one, blank, certified reference material (standard) and two repeats. In addition SMA inserts one standard, blank and duplicate in every 20 samples submitted to the laboratory.

Ends

Enquiries:

SOVEREIGN MINES OF AFRICA PLC

David Pearl, F.C.A. - Chairman                                    +353 696 8961

david.pearl@pearlcp.com

John Barry - Exploration Director                                    +353 87 669 5608

SHORE CAPITAL - NOMINATED ADVISER & BROKER

Toby Gibbs/Bidhi Bhoma - Corporate Finance

Jerry Keen - Corporate Broking                                    +44 207 408 4090