OPINION | Africa’s critical minerals: Powering industrialisation

As the global demand for critical minerals surges, African nations are seizing the opportunity to reshape their industrial landscape. Governments across the continent are advocating for mineral sovereignty, particularly through proposals that grant states the right of pre-emption before resources are sold. Additionally, there is a rising push for local beneficiation, emphasizing the importance of processing raw minerals rather than merely exporting them in their unprocessed state.

This shift is crucial, as Africa has long been a supplier of resources and a purchaser of finished goods, remaining at the bottom of the value chain for decades.

The United Nations Trade and Development (UNCTAD) reported that strategic sectors, such as AI infrastructure, semiconductors, critical minerals, and energy-transition technologies, accounted for 44% of global greenfield investment in 2025, up from 16% in 2020. African countries, including South Africa, are well-positioned to challenge the existing model and benefit from this global race for critical minerals.

In 2025, Africa attracted approximately $70 billion in foreign direct investment, its third-highest level since 1990.

However, while investment opportunities are promising, the execution of these plans poses significant challenges. Building a competitive industrial ecosystem necessitates reliable energy, water, rail, and ports, advanced technology, skilled labor, capital, regulatory certainty, and access to markets. Above all, scale is essential.

This reality may compel African countries to collaborate regionally, leveraging each nation's unique strengths. For instance, one country might possess mineral resources, another could offer processing capabilities, while a third contributes manufacturing expertise, finance, logistics, or technology.

The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCTA) could serve as the foundation for this regional coordination, transcending its role as a mere trade agreement. To truly capitalize on the critical-minerals era, Africa must redefine value. This includes measuring factors such as the number of local suppliers created, technical capability transferred, engineers, data scientists, and artisans developed, the extent of local or regional processing, and the overall infrastructure created that enhances the productive capacity of surrounding economies.

Ultimately, the focus should be on measuring how much of the value generated by Africa's resources remains within the continent.

Africa's strategic position in the global supply chain presents an opportunity to leverage mineral security concerns, as well as businesses' desire for diversified sources and investors' search for strategic assets. However, these leverage windows are temporary. The continent must avoid another decade of debate about the imperative of value addition and instead prioritize execution.

This entails bankable projects, enabling infrastructure, regional coordination, credible policy, and partnerships capable of mobilizing capital at scale. Crucially, these partnerships must be forged from a position of ambition, not dependency.

Moreover, Africa's young population presents an additional dimension to this opportunity. A mineral boom that fails to build future skills risks becoming yet another missed opportunity. The next mining economy will require advanced engineering, renewable-energy capability, automation, data analytics, artificial intelligence, logistics, environmental science, finance, and sophisticated supply-chain management.

Therefore, the challenge extends beyond creating more mining jobs; it involves cultivating a new generation of African industrial capability.

In conclusion, Africa's success in the critical-minerals era will not be measured by how much the world extracts from its soil. Instead, it will be determined by how much economic capability Africa builds upon its resources as the world relies on it. The true measure of Africa's achievement will be the industrial prowess it develops, turning its mineral wealth into a platform for sustained growth and development.