The global demand of base metals has been steadily on the rise since the fourth industrial revolution, and in the past 20 years, the rise has sharply increased, driven by the paradigm energy transition from traditional fossils utilization to green sustainable technologies. Base metals play are key in these sectors particularly in structural developments, smart materials for the health sector and as key elements in the renewable energy storage facilities, energy transmission and in the automotive industry. Copper is an essential base metal, particularly in driving energy transition and electrification, in electronics and technology advancements, in urbanization and infrastructure growth etc. For instance, the utilization of copper in electric vehicles is reported as 2-4 times that of internal combustion engine cars therefore its demand has been steadily on the rise. Mining sector remain crucial to the development of Southern African economies, Botswana having its economy being driven by the diamond industry, however, observing the dangers of relying on diamonds, the government has since set its sights towards diversification of its industrial sector. This starts with the prominent mining sector, by promoting and resuscitating once operational base metals mines, particularly reviving the copper industry, which currently is the second mined mineral in the country. Copper reserves in Botswana are predominantly sulphide ores therefore they have been beneficiated through the pyrometallurgy route. However, with the depletion of rich ore bodies, and the imposed environmental laws set to reduce climate effects resulting from anthropogenic emissions, the traditional route has not been favorable anymore. This led to the country exporting its resources solely in concentrate form, losing some valuable revenue in that transaction, therefore the need to extract, separate and purify base metals from these concentrates is more beneficial for the nation. Hydrometallurgy technologies developed in the late 20th century to the beginning of the 21st century, e.g. the Activox, CESL technologies, have demonstrated effective extraction, countering the traditional drawbacks of sulphide mineral leaching. This work looks therefore into adoption of the Activox technology for the efficient beneficiation of copper in Botswana. The Activox technology is parent to two daughter processes, the ultra-fine grinding process and the oxidative pressure acid leaching. The scope of this work dwelt on the primary process, the ultra-fine grinding process, an energy intensive process, for the mechanical activation of the mineral surfaces for effective extraction of copper form its mineral matrix. Due to equipment constraints faced, the work was conducted using a 5litre laboratory ball mill, with the aim of modelling and optimizing the process, i.e. the product grind quality and energy consumption. This was achieved through hybrid modelling, i.e. machine learning modelling surrogated with statistical modelling. The StatEase Design Expert software was utilized for statistical modelling while the Artificial Neural Network and Artificial Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System packages in Matlab 2021a were used. The UFG process is highly complex, as evidenced by increasing research conducted on it, assessing the impact of various factors on its efficiency, both in grinding extent and energy consumption, e.g. rotational speed, powder filling, media type, media size, media filling, solids/liquids ratio and use of viscosity modifiers etc. In this study, the effects of grinding media size, milling speed, milling time and media filling ration were tested experimentally on the efficiency of the process on both counts. The outright realization herein was that media size greatly impacts the process, and this aligned with reports from literature with the generalisation for machine learning. particle size grammar xvii | P a g e that fine media best suits fine milling, and the effect of this was also noticed in energy consumption as lengthy milling periods were needed with coarse media for effective grinding compared to fine media. Further analysis of the observations from experiments using fine media showed that the base factor of importance was the media filling ratio, from which mill speed and milling time impacts relied on. This was a positive realisation as it highlighted the potential of improved production rate at maximum filling of the media, subject to optimisation of this filling rate using the attainable region as thus recommended in this work. Modelling of the processed led to effective optimisation, firstly after realisation of 20μm being the optimum P80 grind size, compared to the technology’s 10μm from characterization. As such, the hybrid modelling exercise was effectively done, with validation results when using a different sulphide ore, of 97.34% for P80 predictions using the ANFIS technique while that of SE at 85.71% using the ANN technique. The ascertain the validity of this optimisation, a cost benefit analysis was conducted, and it proved that with optimizing the process from 10μm to 20μm, a 24.45% energy saving could be realized. This translates to a massive saving especially in a process that is energy intensive as such this could lead to the feasible adoption of the technology, leading to reviving the economy, creating more employment opportunities. To fully stamp on this optimisation, a comparison of the leaching at 10μm and 20μm is required to ascertain the extraction efficiency as validation of the entire work.