Investors will be able to buy a slice of a rare earth miner in Burundi after Rainbow Rare Earths revealed plans to list on the London Stock Exchange.

RRE wants to raise £5.7m to dust off and restart the Gakara mine in the landlocked east African country, which

operated for 30 years until 1978.

Rare earths enjoyed a flurry of interest at the start of the decade before prices cooled. However, RRE believes the minerals at Gukara – such as lanthanum, cerium and neodymium – will enjoy rising demand as they are needed in batteries, magnets and the automotive industry.

“As the world grows, we will consume more of these things,” said Martin Eales, the managing director of RRE. “The fundamentals are pointing the right way.”

RRE believes the very high grade of the rare earths at Gakara – some 57pc concentrate – will keep its costs low as the ore will require little processing. Mr Eales said the mining process was “very simple”.

“The grade is so high you can extract it from the hillside with excavators and manual labour,” he said.

RRE also has an offtake agreement with German industrial giant Thyssenkrupp to take “everything we can produce”. “It’s a great seal of approval to have a company like that want to do business with us,” Mr Eales said.

Adonis Pouroulis, the chairman, who founded Petra Diamonds and a series of other companies within his Pella Resources stable, said he had been encouraged to take RRE public by several potential cornerstone investors.

“We’ve listed a few companies in London and there’s certainly a positive feeling in resources [stocks] at the moment,” he said.

“There’s a lot of funding for African projects in London, and we see this as a dividend payer down the line.”

The project has “very strong support” in Burundi, Mr Pouroulis added, as it will create up to 200 jobs plus dozens more indirectly in the surrounding area.

Despite their name, rare earths are not particularly scarce, although they can be difficult to extract economically. They tend to occur together in nature and it can be hard to separate them.

China dominates the market, with a share of about 90pc, but RRE believes it can provide a small but useful alternative supply.

It will list in the coming weeks with Hannam & Partners and Daniel Stewart as joint bookrunners. First production from the mine is expected in the fourth quarter of the year.