Nigeria and the African Development Bank are calling for stronger African control over the continent’s critical minerals, arguing that mineral-rich countries must retain more economic value through local processing, regional cooperation and greater ownership of resource data.
The proposals were presented at the Ministerial Forum on Critical Minerals, Value Chain and Beneficiation: Pathways for African Transformation in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, which brought together more than 20 ministers alongside representatives of financial institutions and mining companies.
Moving Beyond Raw Mineral Exports
Nigeria’s Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Dele Alake, urged African countries to replace isolated national policies with a coordinated continental strategy for processing and benefiting from their mineral resources.
“While the mantra of value addition has ushered in an era of economic independence for mineral-producing nations, we need concrete, actionable strategies to take charge and be in full control of our natural assets to ensure total economic freedom,” Alake said.
Nigeria and the AfDB stated that Africa must move beyond extracting and exporting unprocessed minerals. Instead, countries should build processing capacity, develop local industries and generate employment around their natural resources.
A Lagos–Dakar Processing Corridor
Alake proposed establishing a West African minerals-processing corridor stretching from Lagos to Dakar and modelled on the Lobito Corridor in Central and Southern Africa.
The proposed corridor would allow participating countries to specialize according to their comparative advantages, share infrastructure and reduce the financial burden associated with developing separate processing facilities.
It would also distribute the risks and benefits of mineral development while supporting cross-border trade and industrial cooperation. Alake argued that African countries should replace competition with strategic interdependence because commercially viable mineral value chains require cooperation between markets with different resources and capabilities.
Greater Control of Mineral Data
In a statement issued by the Minister’s Special Assistant on Media, Lara Owoeye-Wise, Alake also called for African sovereignty over the systems used to assess, classify and report mineral resources.
He advocated adopting the Pan African Resource Reporting Code, developed by the Africa Minerals Development Centre, as the continent’s reporting framework. The system is intended to promote transparency, consistency and ethical reporting while reflecting Africa’s geological, environmental and mineral-resource characteristics.
“For the overall interest of the continent, and to efficiently and effectively safeguard its resources, Africa should take charge of the coding mechanisms utilized to assess its mineral assets,” Alake said.
Regional Trade and Financing Challenges
Alake highlighted Africa’s low level of internal trade, noting that intra-African commerce accounts for about 16 per cent, compared with approximately 60 per cent in Asia and 70 per cent in Europe.
AfDB President Sidi Ould Tah also pointed to the contrast between Africa’s extensive critical-mineral deposits and the limited gains those resources have generated in economic growth and global influence.
He further highlighted the gap between the continent’s investment opportunities and the financing available to develop them. Participants at the forum reaffirmed that regional value addition, stronger cooperation and greater African control of mineral resources would be essential to achieving sustainable economic transformation.
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