At the Fourth Financing for Development (FFD4) Conference last month (July 2025) in Seville, Spain, the Open Society Foundations (OSF) and the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) brought together policymakers, experts, and civil society leaders to debate one of the defining questions of our time: whose energy transition is Africa’s critical minerals boom really serving?
As global powers from China to the EU and the United States compete to secure supplies of cobalt, lithium, and copper, Africa finds itself at the crossroads of a new geopolitical scramble. Projects such as the $1.6 billion Lobito Corridor, linking Angola, Zambia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, are being touted as game-changers for development. Yet, as participants noted, the financing, design, and governance of such mega-projects raise uncomfortable questions: are they designed to serve African citizens and economies, or primarily to feed the energy transitions of others?
Moderated by Lindlyn Moma, Director of Strategic Impact at IIED, the discussion cut to the heart of Africa’s development dilemmas: who defines Africa’s critical minerals agenda, who benefits from it, and at what cost?
The conversation underscored three urgent realities.
1. The Infrastructure Mirage
From billion-dollar transport corridors to solar-powered grids, Africa’s infrastructure boom is being marketed as the key to unlocking mineral wealth. Yet, as Brian Kagoro, Managing Director of Programs at OSF, pointed out, the numbers don’t always add up: “A project worth $1.6 billion sounds impressive, but when compared to the revenues it generates, the figure is small substantively. What have we oversold and what have we undervalued?”
Participants reflected on recent developments such as Zambia’s newly launched Chinese-built solar grid. While such projects dominate headlines, the real question is whether they deliver sustainable returns or simply deepen dependency. Kagoro noted that infrastructure costs are soaring while social and environmental impacts remain largely ignored.
2. The Trap of Long-Term Deals
Critical minerals contracts, trade agreements, and investment treaties being signed today could lock African states into decades of dependency. Lorenzo Cotula, Head of Law, Economies and Justice at IIED, cautioned: “These agreements are long term, they’re difficult to get out of, and they will constrain options for governments 10 or 20 years from now, when circumstances may have completely changed.”
This is especially pressing as technologies for cobalt, lithium, and other minerals evolve quickly. Signing inflexible deals today risks leaving Africa locked into obsolete arrangements tomorrow. Short-term capital inflows must not mortgage Africa’s long-term sovereignty.
3. Who Owns the Vision?
China has a strategy for Africa, the Netherlands has a strategy for Africa, Canada, France, Spain, Italie etc. have strategies for Africa, but Africa has no strategy for anyone.
The African Mining Vision (AMV) remains aspirational rather than binding. Without a proper collective strategy, African states respond piecemeal to external initiatives, forfeiting leverage and reinforcing fragmentation. Trevor Simumba, a Zambian trade and investment policy expert stressed that unless countries like Zambia and the DRC coordinate their approaches, they will continue to negotiate from a position of weakness.
Beyond Extractivism
The panel challenged the assumption that building corridors and exporting raw minerals will automatically generate jobs and industrial linkages. Brian Kagoro reminded the audience that history proves otherwise: “We keep assuming that value addition will happen naturally. It doesn’t. We’ve seen decommissioned railways and unemployed workers left behind by past extractive booms.”
True transformation requires rethinking infrastructure and minerals policy as tools for industrialization, human rights, and ecological sustainability, not just extraction.
A Call for People-Centered Strategy
For Ketakandriana (“Ke”) Rafitoson, Executive Director of Publish What You Pay, the minerals agenda must be rooted in transparency and accountability: “Critical minerals governance cannot just be about contracts and corridors. Citizens need to be part of the conversation, because this is as much about rights and democracy as it is about economics.”
The panel agreed: critical minerals are Africa’s leverage in the global energy transition. But without participatory governance and regional coordination, that leverage risks being squandered.
Conclusion: The Road Ahead
The discussion reminded us that the fight over Africa’s minerals is also a fight over its future. If Africa fails to craft its own infrastructure and critical minerals strategy, others will continue to do it on its behalf. The stakes are generational: sovereignty, sustainability, and the ability to harness mineral wealth for people, not just for profits.
The message from Seville was unambiguous: Africa must move from being the object of global strategies to being the author of its own.
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Useful observations in this blog!
It is worth noting that the African Mining Vision (AMV) is now complemented by the AU-led “Africa’s Green Minerals Strategy” (December 2024, linked below).
That said, while the Africa’s Green Minerals Strategy both echoes and goes beyond the AMV, the critiques of the AMV set out in this blog generally appear to apply to “Africa’s Green Minerals Strategy”–though the same general tensions (“Without a proper collective strategy, African states respond piecemeal to external initiatives, forfeiting leverage and reinforcing fragmentation”) apply to the relationship between the AU and its member states in many policy/issue contexts (think security financing, NEPAD project funding, AU and space, AU and CAADP/agric., etc).
With regard to African minerals is also useful to raise the “responsible sourcing” model, which originated with U.S. and later EU legal mandates tied to so-called “conflict minerals” requiring private sector due diligence in sourcing practices in line with the OECD Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Supply Chains of Minerals from Conflict-Affected and High-Risk Areas.
That general approach has since been extended to other issues (e.g., child labor or mining firm security force-community relations and country value-added mineral processing beneficiation) and to other minerals–as under the Responsible Minerals Initiative (and its various tools, standards, and processes), as well as varying mining-related value-chain stages and ESG policy contexts, as exemplified in summary in the U.S.-led “Minerals Security Partnership (MSP) Principles for Responsible Critical Mineral Supply Chains (link below).
But with regard to responsible mineral sourcing and production, such as mineral origin track and trace systems, the question of who these systems serve (e.g., African mining-adjacent communities or small-scale miners VS foreign firms and governments’ needs) remains a key question, as discussed by the NGO IMPACT in their commentary “Beyond the Label: Rethinking Traceability in Critical Minerals” (linked below).
https://www.responsiblemineralsinitiative.org/minerals-due-diligence/standards/
… and multiple other info pages linked from above site.
https://impacttransform.org/en/rethinking-traceability-in-critical-minerals/
It is worth noting that the African Mining Vision (AMV) is now complemented by the AU-led “Africa’s Green Minerals Strategy” (December 2024, linked below).
That said, while the Africa’s Green Minerals Strategy both echoes and goes beyond the AMV, the critiques of the AMV set out in this blog generally appear to apply to “Africa’s Green Minerals Strategy”–though the same general tensions (“Without a proper collective strategy, African states respond piecemeal to external initiatives, forfeiting leverage and reinforcing fragmentation”) apply to the relationship between the AU and its member states in many policy/issue contexts (think security financing, NEPAD project funding, AU and space, AU and CAADP/agric., etc).
With regard to African minerals is also useful to raise the “responsible sourcing” model, which originated with U.S. and later EU legal mandates tied to so-called “conflict minerals” requiring private sector due diligence in sourcing practices in line with the OECD Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Supply Chains of Minerals from Conflict-Affected and High-Risk Areas.
That general approach has since been extended to other issues (e.g., child labor or mining firm security force-community relations and country value-added mineral processing beneficiation) and to other minerals–as under the Responsible Minerals Initiative (and its various tools, standards, and processes), as well as varying mining-related value-chain stages and ESG policy contexts, as exemplified in summary in the U.S.-led “Minerals Security Partnership (MSP) Principles for Responsible Critical Mineral Supply Chains (link below).
But with regard to responsible mineral sourcing and production, such as mineral origin track and trace systems, the question of who these systems serve (e.g., African mining-adjacent communities or small-scale miners VS foreign firms and governments’ needs) remains a key question, as discussed by the NGO IMPACT in their commentary “Beyond the Label: Rethinking Traceability in Critical Minerals” (linked below).
https://www.responsiblemineralsinitiative.org/minerals-due-diligence/standards/
… and multiple other info pages linked from above site.
https://impacttransform.org/en/rethinking-traceability-in-critical-mi
Edit to above comment: Missing word (“it”)–
“With regard to African minerals, IT is also….”