An excerpt from a presentation by Prof Olugbenga Okunlola, President geological Society of Africa, at AFNIS 2025.
Africa stands at a decisive moment in the global resource economy. The accelerating energy transition, growing demand for critical minerals, and shifting geopolitical supply chains have elevated the continent’s mineral and energy endowment from a historical asset to a strategic lever for industrial transformation.
Yet this opportunity is accompanied by familiar structural questions: how can Africa move beyond extraction toward value creation? How can resource wealth translate into durable development outcomes? And how can governments balance national interests with global supply demands in an increasingly competitive minerals market?
Addressing these questions requires a comprehensive framework for strategic mineral and energy resource management; one that integrates geological knowledge, industrial policy, financial capacity and regional cooperation.
The Strategic Imperative of Critical Minerals
Critical minerals have become central to the modern industrial and technological economy. Materials such as lithium, cobalt, rare earth elements and graphite are indispensable to electric vehicles, renewable energy systems, battery storage technologies and advanced manufacturing.
Criticality assessments, increasingly conducted by major economies, aim to identify minerals that face high supply risks while also being economically essential. Governments in the United States and the European Union have invested significantly in such assessments to guide industrial strategy and supply chain security.
For Africa, the implications are profound. The continent hosts significant deposits of many of these strategic minerals, positioning it as a key participant in the emerging global energy transition economy. However, without deliberate policy coordination and strategic planning, Africa risks repeating historical patterns of exporting raw resources while importing finished technologies at significantly higher value.
To address this imbalance, African policymakers and institutions have begun advancing new frameworks designed to strengthen continental control over mineral value chains and enhance economic resilience.
Emerging Trends in Africa’s Mining and Energy Landscape
Recent developments across the continent illustrate a growing shift in policy thinking and industrial strategy.
One of the most notable trends is the increasing emphasis on local beneficiation and value addition. Since 2022, more than a dozen African countries have introduced restrictions on the export of unprocessed critical minerals.
Zimbabwe’s prohibition on raw lithium exports and Namibia’s restrictions on exporting unprocessed lithium, manganese, cobalt, graphite and rare earth elements reflect a broader effort to retain more economic value domestically.
Energy considerations are also reshaping the mining sector. Energy costs account for between 10 and 35 percent of mining operating expenses in many Sub-Saharan African jurisdictions. In response, mining companies are increasingly adopting hybrid energy systems, combining solar generation with battery storage and other technologies to stabilise power supply and reduce reliance on national grids.
In South Africa alone, mining companies have committed an estimated $3.8 billion to solar power projects, representing nearly 4,000 megawatts of new generating capacity. These investments illustrate how energy security is becoming an integral component of mining competitiveness.
At the same time, national governments are developing more formal critical minerals strategies. Zambia launched its strategy in 2024, while South Africa is preparing a similar framework. Regional partnerships are also expanding, including collaboration between South Africa and the United Kingdom on responsible mineral development and the strategic mineral supply agreement between the Democratic Republic of Congo and the European Union.
Infrastructure initiatives such as the Lobito Corridor; supported by Angola, the DRC, Zambia, the African Development Bank, the Africa Finance Corporation, the European Union and the United States, further demonstrate the scale of international interest in Africa’s mineral logistics networks.
Toward a Continental Strategy: The African Green Minerals Framework
Efforts to coordinate mineral development are increasingly anchored within continental frameworks aligned with the Africa Mining Vision. Among the most prominent initiatives is the emerging African Green Minerals Strategy (AGMS), structured around four core pillars:
Advancing Mineral Development
This pillar focuses on strengthening geological knowledge, exploration capabilities and resource management systems in order to improve the quality of mineral data available to investors and policymakers.
Developing People and Technological Capabilities
Human capital development is central to maximizing Africa’s resource potential. Building skills in mineral processing, metallurgy, digital mining technologies and resource governance will determine whether African economies can capture greater portions of mineral value chains.
Building Integrated Value Chains
Industrialisation remains a central objective. Local beneficiation, green technology manufacturing and mineral-based industrial clusters could transform Africa from a supplier of raw materials into a producer of advanced industrial components.
Strengthening Mineral Stewardship
Responsible mining practices, environmental sustainability and circular economy principles are increasingly recognised as prerequisites for long-term competitiveness in global resource markets.
Together, these pillars reflect an ambition to build a fully integrated mineral ecosystem, linking geological exploration to industrial production and technological innovation.
Financing the Resource Transformation
One of the most persistent structural constraints facing African mineral development is access to long-term capital.
Financial systems across much of the continent remain heavily concentrated in retail banking and trade finance. Large-scale mining projects, however, require patient capital, complex risk management and sophisticated financial instruments.
Developing stronger financial institutions — including investment banks, pension funds, insurance pools and asset management platforms — will be essential for mobilising domestic capital for strategic mining projects. Development finance institutions can also play a catalytic role, particularly in early-stage exploration and regional geological mapping.
Without these financial mechanisms, Africa’s resource sector will remain dependent on external financing structures that often limit domestic participation in value chains.
The Role of Geological Knowledge
Effective mineral development begins with reliable geological information.
Strengthening national geological surveys and establishing regional geological databases that transcend political boundaries would significantly improve exploration outcomes and reduce investor uncertainty. Regional economic communities could collaborate to develop shared geoscience datasets, remote sensing platforms and mineral information systems.
Investments in regional assay laboratories, geophysical survey capacity and drilling services would also help reduce the costs associated with exploration activities, which currently often require sending mineral samples to laboratories outside the continent.
Such institutional infrastructure forms the foundation of a competitive mining ecosystem.
Building Regional Value Chains
Many critical mineral deposits in Africa are relatively small and may not individually sustain full processing value chains. A regional approach can address this challenge.
Pooling mineral outputs from multiple mines into shared regional processing facilities could allow countries to achieve economies of scale while retaining value within the continent. Regional beneficiation plants could process concentrates from several jurisdictions, creating integrated value chains across regional economic blocs.
However, such arrangements require coordinated regulatory frameworks. Tax regimes, royalty structures, local content rules, environmental standards and licensing systems must be sufficiently aligned to support cross-border industrial cooperation.
Strategic Partnerships and Global Market Integration
While regional cooperation is essential, Africa’s mineral transformation will also depend on strategic partnerships with global industry leaders.
Developed economies remain the primary consumers of many critical minerals and possess advanced technological capabilities across mineral processing and manufacturing value chains. Collaborative partnerships can help African producers meet international quality standards, access advanced processing technologies and integrate into global supply networks.
These partnerships should be structured to ensure knowledge transfer, skills development and long-term industrial capability building within African economies.
Market Intelligence and Strategic Coordination
A further institutional priority is the creation of a continental market intelligence unit for minerals.
Such an entity could monitor global supply chains, identify emerging mineral demand trends and provide early warning signals for potential supply disruptions.
The unit could also coordinate research into battery technologies, recycling strategies and substitutes for rare earth elements. In an increasingly technology-driven resource economy, market intelligence is becoming as important as geological knowledge.
Building Africa’s Battery Value Chain
The global shift toward electric mobility has intensified demand for battery materials such as lithium, cobalt, manganese and graphite — many of which are abundant in Africa.
A continent-wide feasibility study assessing Africa’s readiness to participate in the battery manufacturing value chain could help identify which countries possess the necessary industrial infrastructure, energy capacity, financial resources and governance frameworks to host different segments of the battery ecosystem.
The results could inform a coordinated regional approach to battery production, allowing multiple African economies to participate in the value chain rather than competing for isolated projects.
Skills, Infrastructure and Industrial Foundations
Human capital development remains central to this transformation.
While exploration expertise is widely available across Africa, the continent still faces significant skills gaps in mineral processing, advanced metallurgy and downstream manufacturing. Establishing regional centres of excellence for mineral and energy technologies could help bridge this gap.
Infrastructure investment will also be critical. Mining competitiveness depends heavily on reliable transport corridors, electricity supply, water access and port capacity. These projects often require long development timelines and large capital commitments, making coordinated public-private partnerships essential.
From Resource Endowment to Development Outcomes
Africa’s mineral wealth has long been discussed through the lens of the “resource curse.” Yet history does not dictate the future.
As former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan once observed, Africa’s leaders have the opportunity to harness resource wealth for transformative development outcomes.
Realising that opportunity requires deliberate policy choices: strengthening institutions, investing in knowledge systems, building industrial capacity and coordinating regional strategies.
If these foundations are established, Africa’s mineral and energy resources could become the cornerstone of a new phase of economic transformation — one defined not by extraction alone, but by innovation, industrialisation and long-term prosperity.