Determined to usher a new lease of life for African economies, Nigeria and the African Development Bank (AfDB) have called for stronger African control over the continent’s vast mineral resources, advocating data sovereignty, regional collaboration and strategic financing as essential to ensuring that mineral-rich countries in Africa derive greater economic value from their natural assets.
While addressing the Ministerial Forum on Critical Minerals, Value Chain and Beneficiation: Pathways for African Transformation, held under the auspices of the African Development Bank (AfDB) in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria’s solid minerals development minister Dr Dele Alake urged fellow ministers from Africa’s mineral-producing countries to adopt a strategic approach to interdependence and regional cooperation.
He stressed that the continent’s vast mineral wealth could generate far greater benefits if countries work together rather than pursuing isolated national approaches.
As one of Africa’s mineral-rich countries, Nigeria has increasingly positioned itself at the forefront of efforts to promote value addition, local processing and greater African ownership of the continent’s mineral development agenda.
In his welcome remarks, the president of AfDB, Dr Sidi Ould Tah, highlighted the paradoxes confronting Africa despite its enormous mineral wealth.
He pointed to the contradiction between Africa’s vast size and resources and its limited global influence, noting that the continent’s substantial deposits of critical minerals are yet to translate into commensurate gains in Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Dr Tah also identified the paradox of opportunities without adequate finance, reflected in the low levels of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) flowing into Africa.
Both leaders agreed that African countries must move beyond the traditional extraction of raw minerals and develop concrete strategies to take full control of their natural assets.
“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.
Alake, who is the pioneering chairman of Africa Mineral Strategy Group (AMSG) also highlighted Nigeria’s role in advancing a common continental approach to mineral development, acknowledging the contributions of the group’s more than 30-member countries in repositioning African mineral-producing nations around the principle of value addition.
He however stressed that African countries must also achieve sovereignty over the data and technical systems used to assess their mineral wealth, just as he described the longstanding reliance of African countries on the Australia-based Joint Ore Reserves Committee (JORC) as the standard for estimating and publicly reporting mineral exploration results as outdated.
“For the overall interest of the continent and to efficiently and effectively safeguard its resources, Africa should take charge of the coding mechanisms utilised to assess its mineral assets,” Alake said.
He advocated the adoption of the Pan African Resource Reporting Code (PARC), a home-grown framework established by the Africa Minerals Development Centre (AMDC) for the public reporting of mineral and energy resources.
According to him, PARC offers a framework that promotes transparency, consistency and ethical competency certification across Africa’s mining and energy sectors, while taking into account the peculiarities, qualities, environmental conditions and characteristics of the continent’s mineral resources.
For Nigeria, the push for a continental reporting system is particularly significant as the country seeks to better defines, documents and develop its mineral assets while strengthening its position in the global critical minerals economy.
Alake also called for stronger regional cooperation to address the enormous financial and infrastructural requirements of developing Africa’s mineral resources through the creation of a West African minerals processing hub and corridor modelled on the Lobito Corridor.
The proposed corridor would stretch from Lagos to Dakar, with countries leveraging their comparative advantages to serve as processing hubs for specific minerals.
Such an arrangement, he said, would reduce the financial burden on individual countries, lower costs, facilitate collaborative trading and enable participating nations to share both the risks and rewards of mineral development.
The proposal is in line with Nigeria’s broader strategic interest in positioning itself as a major regional centre for mineral processing, industrial development and value addition.
The ministerial forum resolved that African countries must adopt a concerted and results-oriented approach to critical minerals policy and governance while pursuing integrated regional infrastructure organised around corridors, value-chain development and capital mobilisation.
These commitments were captured in the Abidjan Declaration, which placed financing at the centre of efforts to transform Africa’s solid minerals sector.
Under the declaration, ADB pledged to deploy its financial instruments, capital-structuring and mobilisation capacity, as well as technical expertise, to support mineral-producing countries and catalyse public and private investment in Africa’s minerals sector.
