Editor’s Note
This article argues for a standardized governance framework to regulate Africa’s trade in critical minerals, emphasizing the need for export controls to ensure accountability, prevent revenue loss, and mitigate the risks associated with conflict minerals.
There is a need for a governance framework to regulate Africa’s trade in critical minerals through a standard register of reporting — particularly regarding exports. In effect, this creates an export authority that regulates the trade in Africa’s critical minerals for accountability purposes. This is important to address the leakage of mineral rents and to manage the prevalence of conflict stones worsening state fragility.
Such critical minerals as tin, tungsten, and gold are embedded in our everyday electronics and are considered conflict minerals due to their origins in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). After a summit of mineral-rich African states in Kimberley in May 2000, a resolution was adopted by the UN General Assembly in December 2000. This supported the creation of an international certification scheme for rough diamonds and was hailed by world leaders as a milestone in halting the illegal trade in conflict stones.
Further, a landmark decision by the US Securities & Exchange Commission in the same year saw the adoption of a rule requiring companies to disclose their use of conflict minerals that originated in the DRC or an adjoining country.
Africa holds about $24 trillion in untapped mineral resources — about 30% of the world’s minerals reserves, many of which are critical for the development of batteries and electric vehicles, other clean energy technologies, and the aerospace industries. To meet the expected rise in global demand for minerals and metals such as lithium, graphite, platinum group metals, rare earth elements (for magnets in electronic motors and generators), and cobalt, production will need to increase by nearly 500% by 2050. This cannot be achieved without Africa’s mineral resource endowments.
Access to critical minerals is strategically important as such minerals are taking centre stage in geopolitics in the increasing competition for strategic control over global supply chains. Competition for access to Africa’s critical materials will increase, placing the continent at the heart of the green economy in environmental and geopolitical terms.
The rationale for a standard regulation of Africa’s critical minerals is to set forth the prohibitions and conditions applicable for Africa’s licensing, exploration, mining, processing, importation, and exportation of such minerals. Because of the following endowments, Africa must lead the process of developing its own continental critical minerals regulatory framework:
– Guinea is the second-largest bauxite producer, exporting about 146.4 million tonnes in 2024.
– About 95% of world chromium and PGM resources are concentrated in Southern Africa and Kazakhstan.
– In 2023, South Africa accounted for 43.9% of the world’s chromium and 71% of PGM production.
– In 2023, South Africa, Turkey, and Zimbabwe led chromium ore exports in a global industry worth $7.57 billion.
– Morocco possesses the world’s largest phosphate reserves, accounting for more than 70% of the world’s resources.
– The DRC holds 6 million tonnes of the world’s cobalt reserves, representing more than 50% of global reserves and accounting for more than 70% of cobalt mined globally in 2024.
– Zambia has long been the world’s biggest exporter of unrefined copper and aims to reach an annual output of 3 million tonnes by 2030.
– In 2021, large graphite deposits were developed in Madagascar, northern Mozambique, Namibia, and south-central Tanzania.
– South Africa is the world’s largest manganese producer, followed by Gabon. Ivory Coast and Ghana also produce manganese.
– Between 2016 and 2020, South Africa accounted for more than 70% of global platinum production and more than 80% of global iridium production.
– In 2024, the world produced about 170 tonnes of platinum for hydrogen electrolysers and fuel cells — with South Africa as the leading producer at 120 tonnes. Zimbabwe contributed up to 73% of new platinum and 38% of rhodium to the global market in 2023.
Global revenues from the extraction of just four minerals — copper, nickel, cobalt, and lithium — are estimated to total $16 trillion over the next 25 years (in 2023 dollar terms). Sub-Saharan Africa stands to reap more than 10% of these revenues, which correspond to an increase in the region’s GDP by 12% or more by 2050. This calls for a review of mining policies, regulatory frameworks, and an alternative template for the effective governance of mineral revenues.
For local populations to truly benefit from the continent’s mineral wealth, lessons must be learnt from decades of jobless growth, spurred by the export of unprocessed extractives such as crude oil. There is a tendency for resource-dependent countries to become more authoritarian, more prone to conflict, and less economically stable than similar countries without resources.
Developing a sound governance environment will increase Africa’s collective bargaining power, transparency of contracts, and development opportunities.