The second scramble for Africa's mineral wealth
https://arab.news/6c2j7
An accelerating global push to combat climate change has unintentionally elevated Africa to a position of unprecedented strategic importance.
The continent has nearly a third of the planet's known mineral reserves, including commanding shares of elements essential for decarbonization technology: 85 percent of global manganese, 80 percent of platinum group metals and chromium, and an estimated 70 percent of cobalt, concentrated primarily in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
These elements — lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite, rare earths — form the physical foundation for electric vehicle batteries, renewable energy systems, and the advanced electronics critical for future green economies.
As major economies aggressively pursue net-zero targets, securing reliable supplies of these materials has become synonymous with efforts to secure future economic competitiveness and national security.
However, this convergence of ecological necessity and resource dependency is resurrecting deep-seated fears of renewed, intense competition for African resources, echoing historical patterns of extraction but amplified by 21st century geopolitics and the immense financial stakes of the inevitable energy transition.
A lopsided equation is undercutting current dynamics, in which immense mineral wealth fails to translate into commensurate local socioeconomic benefits. Sub-Saharan African economies capture, on average, a mere $2 of every $5 of potential revenues from the extraction and export of their natural resources.
The disconnect is sharply illustrated by the bauxite-aluminum value chain. The export of raw bauxite ore yields about $92 a tonne, while the export of refined aluminum commands prices of nearly $2,438 a tonne, earning exporters of the latter over 25 times more than exporters of the raw ore.
At present, the focus is on the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It possesses the world's largest reserves of cobalt, which is critical for production of lithium-ion batteries, and remains overwhelmingly dependent on exports of raw or minimally processed materials.
Most of the country's exports of critical minerals flows to China, which refines more than 60 percent of the world's lithium and 85 percent of rare earth elements. China's established dominance, built over decades through strategic industrial policies rather than vast domestic reserves, has led to Beijing's control over processing capacity, granting it significant leverage as exemplified by recent export controls on minor metals such as gallium and germanium.
However, the reliance of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the rest of Africa, on raw exports leaves economies there acutely vulnerable to commodity price swings, and denies them the jobs, technological transfers, and industrial development inherent in midstream and downstream processing.
This persistent failure to capture added value represents a systemic economic failure that is perpetuating dependence despite possession of the very resources driving global technological advancement.
In response, the US and its allies are scrambling to reduce these emergent vulnerabilities. Initiatives such as the Minerals Security Partnership aim to 'friendshore' supply chains among allied nations, while significant investments seek to boost domestic processing and recycling.
At present, the US remains import dependent for 15 critical minerals, and more than 50 percent reliant for 34 others, with China supplying nearly half. This dependency is now driving rare, assertive diplomatic and commercial overtures toward mineral-rich African states — but they follow the same old formula of intense extractionism at the continent's expense.
The contrasting approaches — multilateral partnerships versus unilateral actions, including overt pressure on resource access — are the hallmarks of the high-stakes nature of this brewing competition with Africa at its heart. The most immediate risk is a fragmentation of global supply chains along geopolitical lines, forcing African nations to make difficult choices.
Africa's strategies must incorporate aggressive investment in domestic research and development.
Hafed Al-Ghwell
Optimistically, the meteoric growth in demand for Africa's critical minerals presents a potential inflection point. Properly harnessed, the revenue streams from these minerals, potentially worth trillions of dollars in the coming decades as demand soars, could catalyze fundamental transformations. Investment could flow into long-neglected areas, funding reliable electricity generation, modern transportation networks and, crucially, education and skills development in fields such as metallurgy, chemical engineering, and environmental sciences.
A move beyond raw exports, for instance, to establish domestic refining and manufacture of components, such as battery precursors, is essential for African nations to capture more value from their resources and build resilient, diversified economies.
Ghana's policy framework that bans raw mineral exports and promotes value-chain development, and nascent efforts such as a collaboration between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zambia on battery production, signal recognition of this imperative.
Regional cooperation, such as exports of raw lithium from Zambia for refining in South Africa, offers further potential for shared industrial development.
However, challenging obstacles threaten to derail the potential this holds and instead entrench a new era of even more exploitative relationships. Decades of mismanagement under the so-called 'resource curse,' weak governance, institutional fragility, pervasive corruption, and the tendency of elites to view national resources as private revenue streams for patronage networks rather than for the public good, remain pervasive challenges.
Without robust democratic accountability, transparency mechanisms such as contract disclosures, and effective civil society oversight, any mineral windfalls are likely to fuel instability and inequality rather than broad-based, 'bottom up, middle out' development.
Furthermore, the current lack of industrial capacity and technical expertise in Africa creates a dependency trap. Policies mandating local processing, such as Zimbabwe's requirement for lithium-refinement plans, often crash on the rocks of inadequate infrastructure and skills. After all, investors are less likely to pour money into a country that bleeds more than 6 percent of gross domestic product every year due to electricity shortfalls alone.
The continent's negligible share of the global electric vehicle market, less than 1 percent, further complicates efforts to attract high-value manufacturing, as firms prioritize locations closer to large consumer bases, such as China, Europe, and North America.
Perhaps the most underappreciated threat is technological obsolescence. The breakneck pace of innovation in materials science could rapidly devalue Africa's present mineral advantages. China's massive investments in sodium-ion battery technology, culminating in the opening of the world's largest storage system in 2024, aim to reduce dependence on lithium and cobalt.
A successful large-scale transition to such alternatives could leave lithium and cobalt-rich African nations with 'stranded assets' if their resources are suddenly less critical to the global energy transition.
Focusing solely on current extraction efforts and battery chemistry is therefore profoundly shortsighted. Africa's strategies must incorporate aggressive investment in domestic research and development, anticipate substitutions of materials, and position themselves within future, not only current, value chains.
Failure to do so risks repeating the mistakes of history: immense wealth extracted, fleeting benefits captured locally and monopolized by cronyism, and enduring vulnerabilities left behind.
The path forward demands a fundamental break from past practices. For African states, success hinges on the prioritization of long-term governance reforms, institutional strengthening, massive investment in human capital and infrastructure, and strategic regional integration to achieve economies of scale.
Policies must be ruthlessly pragmatic, aligning industrial ambitions with realistic assessments of current capabilities while aggressively building future ones.
The alternative, a frenzied rush for resources without addressing the root causes of Africa's historical marginalization within the global economy, risks not only the perpetuation of underdevelopment but also the fueling of instability that could disrupt the very supply chains the energy transition depends on.
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