Africa is sitting on the raw materials to power the world’s green revolution — cobalt, lithium, graphite, rare earths.
A year ago, Maxwell Gomera’s daughter asked him a question he couldn’t answer.
“She had been reading about Zimbabwe’s lithium boom and she said to me: ‘Dad, if we have all this lithium, why are we still poor?’” said Gomera, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) resident representative in South Africa.
“It struck me that the question that she asked is still waiting for an answer, not just for me but from all of us here.”
Africa is sitting on the raw materials to power the world’s green revolution — cobalt, lithium, graphite, rare earths, Gomera told a high-level multistakeholder dialogue hosted by the Open Society Foundations (OSF) with the UNDP on “Turning mineral wealth into negotiating power: Africa and critical minerals supply chains.”
“But we are watching that revolution happening somewhere else with someone else’s jobs and someone else’s prosperity. We are once again … the tomato seller on the roadside, rich in produce but with no fair market and no exit from poverty,” he told delegates to the forum held in Sandton in the run-up to the G20 leaders summit.
It brought together senior policymakers, international organisations, researchers and civil society to examine how the continent can turn mineral wealth into industrial and economic power — and to build a common African narrative on critical minerals at a moment when global powers are competing fiercely for them.
On why Africa remains behind, he said: “The world is in a new scramble for Africa’s minerals, only this time it’s wrapped in the language of climate justice and clean energy.”
Gomera pointed to the massive green subsidies in the United States and Europe that reward only domestic processing, and to China’s dominance in refining and battery production.
“Meanwhile, here on this continent, which ostensibly holds 30% of global mineral reserves and 70% of the world’s cobalt, we capture less than 5% of the value,” he said.
“We dig, they refine, they manufacture, they profit. If we don’t change the rules, the green transition will simply be the old extraction economy in electric vehicle clothing.”
He outlined what Africa must do next. “First, we must treat our critical minerals as leverage, not as commodities. The future is not in the rocks, it’s in the rules — the ones we negotiate and enforce together.”
A unified position anchored in the African Union’s (AU) African Mining Vision and its Green Minerals Strategy is essential to speak “in one voice, one playbook and have one set of non-negotiables”, he said.
“Second, we need to add value at home. Refine lithium in Zimbabwe, assemble batteries here in South Africa, and manufacture green steel in Zambia. Selling raw cobalt is like exporting flour when you could be exporting bread. The margin is the baking.”
Regional partnerships are vital, Gomera argued, proposing an Africa critical minerals fund to finance geological mapping, innovation and entrepreneurs.
“No single African country has a big enough market … but regional partnerships give us a collective weight. South-South cooperation is not charity at all; it’s a strategy, and it’s about time we strengthen it. If we don’t invest in ourselves, someone else will, and they will own the upside.”
This vision, he said, is realistic. “Africa could raise export earnings by $20 billion annually through just beneficiation. That means two million new jobs in green industries,” and vast seabed resources also await responsible exploration.
Momentum is already visible. Namibia has banned unprocessed lithium exports, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia are building a regional battery hub, while South Africa’s G20 presidency is championing mineral beneficiation as a continental priority.
“We are not starting from zero; we are just starting late. But late is better than never. Only if we move now. Partnership must replace the patronage relationship. We must make sure that the new green order doesn’t become the old colonial order in renewable clothing,” Gomera said.
Returning to his daughter’s question, he said: “The answer is we’ve been rich in mineral resources for a very long time, now it’s time to be rich in power … Let’s make this moment our moment to turn our mineral wealth into economic freedom.”
A crisis of global leadership
Global economic shifts expose Africa to new risks, warned Deprose Muchena, the director of the OSF’s Resource Futures in Africa, adding that the world was experiencing “a serious crisis of global leadership”.
During Covid-19, leadership emerged from smaller states, such as Costa Rica, Namibia and South Africa, while traditional powers turned inward.
“We are facing this moment of global crisis in political leadership, and it manifests itself in the crisis of multilateralism … a la carte multilateralism where countries choose when to be multilateral but at all times be personal and bilateral,” Muchena said.
Transactional diplomacy targeting small states in one-on-one critical minerals deals “where you …. negotiate with them until they concede” has become a new phenomenon that must be guarded against, he said.
Equally concerning is “the emergence of an attack on the international human rights protection system … the defunding or threats to defund the United Nations”.
All this is happening during a global rush for minerals essential to energy, security and technology transitions.
“Africa stands at the centre of this transition because we now have a moment to deploy something that nobody can take away from us, which is the mineral resources that we have, that we can deploy to advance the aspirations of a global transition for a decarbonised global economy,” said Muchena.
But the continent’s past must be remembered. Colonialist scrambles created “small enclaves of economic development”, which drove colonisation and kept Africa at the bottom of global production.
“We need to be very careful in this moment that we don’t reproduce the so-called centre-periphery dichotomy where we are the periphery of the global centre and we are told every day that you don’t have a market for manufacturing, so continue to produce raw materials.”
He argued that Africa must reject the narrative that it cannot industrialise. “We’ve changed the name of the raw materials to call them green raw materials. But they still remain the same raw materials that were mined in 1880 until now …”
Muchena warned that without social justice and human rights protections, companies responding to mineral demand “are no longer committing to human rights standards and environmental standards because they undermine the prospects of primitive accumulation of profit”.
Communities must not once again be “washed away by a system that cares very little about those that actually own resources and cares more about elite consumption patterns”.
Muchena said the consecutive G20 presidencies of India, Brazil, Indonesia, and now South Africa have reframed global debates around justice and inequality. The AU’s new permanent G20 seat should help secure these gains before G20 leadership shifts to the Global North.
Strengthening Africa’s bargaining power is essential.
“We are seeing very ruthless critical minerals … transactional politics where you isolate Lesotho, negotiate with it … isolate Zimbabwe, negotiate with it,” Muchena said.
This fragmentation undermines continental strategy. Europe’s Global Gateway strategy also poses risks by using European companies as beneficiaries of secondary industries in Africa.
Transformation, not just resource ownership, must be the goal. Critical mineral revenues should address unemployment, poverty and inequality across the continent.
South-South solidarity is crucial, he said, noting that “for oppressed people, solidarity is the only currency we have”.
Africa, Asia and Latin America must cooperate, from lithium to rare earths, to set prices, share lessons and prevent fragmentation.
“If we don’t do that,” he warned, “Africa risks losing the chance to industrialise, create decent green jobs and reduce inequality.”