Civilizations and periods of human history are labelled by historians the stone age, copper age, bronze age, and the iron age. These terms or descriptions indicate the importance of nonfuel minerals, metals, technology elements and their applications. What is new about the consumption of non-renewable mineral resources is the pace of exploitation, driven in part by advances in technology that allows their extraction and permit the application of mineral commodities in a wide range of needs. Thirdly, better living standards around the globe are increasing the demand across goods and services, including many that are intense in use of mineral commodities. Fourthly, the increase in world population means more people with needs to satisfy.The rise in mineral consumption and production has raised concerns about the availability and reliability of supply. The availability and adequacy of mineral resources have been recurrent, national and world concerns. In contrast to the past concerns on long-run availability of non-renewable resources, with the debate focused on depletion, lately concerns are about the security of mineral supplies. New technologies and engineered materials create the prospect of rapid increases in demand for some minerals previously used in relatively small quantities. On the list are such elements as lithium in automotive batteries for electric vehicles. CITATION:Koitsiwe, K and Bagai, Z B, 2019. Critical minerals: a review assessing risks related to mineral resource availability, in Proceedings 9th International Conference on Sustainable Development in the Minerals Industry, pp 1617 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne).