Africa's Mineral Wealth at Stake: Who Controls the Continent's Clean Energy Future

Africa’s minerals are not waiting. The question is who will benefit from them.

When SADC leaders gathered in Durban for the 46th Ordinary Summit, they did so against a backdrop of extraordinary global demand. The world’s push toward clean energy has made cobalt, copper, lithium, manganese, platinum and rare earth elements more strategically valuable than at any point in modern history. Africa holds roughly 30 percent of global reserves of these materials. The continent produces more than 77 percent of the world’s cobalt, 65 percent of its manganese and 83 percent of its platinum group metals. SADC sits at the center of this endowment: the Democratic Republic of the Congo dominates cobalt production, Zimbabwe holds significant lithium reserves, South Africa supplies platinum and manganese, and Zambia produces copper.

For communities living near those mines, however, the numbers tell a different story.

Minerals contribute around 10 percent of SADC’s GDP, 25 percent of exports and 20 percent of government revenues. Yet the sector accounts for only 7 percent of direct employment. People living beside active mines often face degraded landscapes, limited services and few lasting economic opportunities. The wealth moves outward. The costs stay behind.

This is the structural problem SADC must confront. The region exports raw and semi-finished commodities while importing the finished goods and the prosperity that comes with processing and manufacturing. Without a deliberate change of course, the current mineral boom risks repeating the old pattern of extraction without transformation.

The International Energy Agency projects that demand for critical minerals could more than triple by 2030 under net-zero scenarios. Major economies are already repositioning supply chains in the name of energy security. That compression of time is both a pressure and an opening.

A 2021 Bloomberg-NEF study commissioned by the Economic Commission for Africa put the opportunity in concrete terms. Building a 10,000-tonne battery precursor plant in the DRC would cost roughly 39 million dollars, approximately three times less than an equivalent facility in the United States, while also reducing emissions compared with supply chains routed through China. That single finding illustrates what SADC could capture: not ore shipments, but higher-value goods, technical capabilities, retained wealth and sustainable jobs for the people who live where the minerals are.

Moving toward that outcome requires four shifts. The first is investment in geological knowledge. Accurate data on resource quantity and quality gives negotiators real power; without it, countries concede value to foreign investors from positions of weakness. The second is regional coordination. SADC must function as a unified bloc, developing a minerals compact that harmonizes royalty regimes, investment rules, local-content requirements and skills frameworks. Recent bans on exporting unprocessed lithium in Zimbabwe and unprocessed cobalt in the DRC point in this direction, pushing value addition back to the source.

The third shift is energy. Mineral processing requires clean, reliable and affordable power. SADC’s solar, hydro and renewable resources can become a competitive advantage if linked deliberately to beneficiation, refining, recycling and manufacturing. Low-carbon production is increasingly a market requirement, not a preference. The fourth shift is perhaps the most consequential for ordinary people: community benefit agreements must become standard practice. Equity participation, local procurement, local content requirements, skills development and transparent revenue-sharing can ensure that mining benefits outlast the mines themselves. Communities should not bear the costs of extraction while others capture the returns.

Meanwhile, the Economic Commission for Africa is working with member states to strengthen regional value chains, improve geological mapping, attract responsible investment and address the high cost of capital that continues to constrain African projects, according to analysis published at https://www.sabcnews.com/sabcnews/sadcs-critical-minerals-can-power-africas-structural-transformation/.

The real test is not whether SADC leaders understand the opportunity. It is whether they will act on it together, with enough urgency to matter. The region has the endowment. It has the moment. Whether the families living above those minerals will one day share in the returns depends on what happens next.