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At the IMF-World Bank Spring Meetings, Africa Must Show Up Strategically

I am in Washington, D.C. this week alongside my OSF colleagues and partners to participate in the Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Group.

Twice a year, this gathering brings together finance ministers, central bank governors, development institutions, and civil society. It is often described as technical, but these meetings are among the few global spaces where the rules of the international financial system are debated, and, in many ways, shaped.

What happens here determines how countries borrow, how they respond to crises, and whether governments can invest in their people. It influences whether schools are built, hospitals are funded, and jobs are created. In short: what is negotiated in Washington travels directly into everyday life across the Global South.

A World of Shocks and a System Under Stress

This year’s Spring Meetings are taking place under a unifying concern: how to manage volatility and strengthen resilience in a world of compounding shocks.

In her curtain raiser, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva described a global economy hit by a “large, global, and asymmetric supply shock”, a reminder that instability is no longer episodic, but structural.

The scale of disruption is significant:

  • Global oil supply was reduced by around 13%, with natural gaz flows down by 20%
  • Energy prices surged, with oil jumping from $72 to $120 per barrel at its peak
  • Up to 45 million more people risk falling into food insecurity, bringing the global total above 360 million

These shocks are transmitted through higher inflation, tighter financial conditions, and disrupted supply chains, affecting countries unevenly, depending on their exposure and policy space. The message from the IMF is clear: growth will slow, uncertainty will persist, and policy space will tighten.

Africa at the Intersection of Vulnerability and Opportunity

For Africa, these global dynamics are not abstract, they are immediate and constraining.

  • Public debt across the continent stands at roughly $1.1 trillion
  • More than 20 countries are in or near debt distress
  • Debt servicing absorbs around 15% of government revenues
  • Borrowing costs remain close to 10%, far higher than in advanced economies

At the same time:

  • Over 80% of countries globally are net oil importers, placing many African economies among the most exposed to energy shocks
  • Climate finance remains deeply insufficient, with Africa receiving only about 3% of global flows, much of it as debt

Yet Africa is not only vulnerable, it is central to the future of the global economy.

The continent holds critical minerals essential to the energy transition, represents a rapidly growing share of the global population, and is emerging as a key frontier for industrialization and innovation. This dual reality, high vulnerability and high strategic relevance, defines Africa’s position today.

Why These Meetings Matter More Than Ever

Institutions like the IMF and the World Bank Group shape global economic outcomes. They influence:

  • How debt crises are resolved, …or prolonged
  • The terms and conditions of financing
  • The fiscal space available to governments
  • The global response to development and climate challenges

At a time when the IMF itself projects a downgrade in global growth even under optimistic scenarios, these decisions carry even greater weight.

Africa Must Show Up Differently

In this context, showing up is not enough. Africa must show up strategically. This means engaging not only in formal sessions, but also in shaping the conversations that define outcomes.

Throughout the week, we are contributing to discussions on:

  • The future of multilateralism and industrial policy in a shifting geopolitical landscape
  • Managing volatility and rethinking capital flows in a fragmented global economy
  • Strengthening the voice of borrower countries in global financial governance

These are critical spaces where ideas evolve and coalitions form.

Critical Minerals: From Resource Wealth to Strategic Power

One of the most important conversations this week, and one I am directly engaged in is around critical mineral diplomacy.

Africa holds a significant share of the minerals that power the global energy transition, cobalt, lithium, manganese, and more. Yet historically, the continent has captured only a fraction of the value generated from its resources. To address this, we are convening a closed-door Policy Dialogue on Critical Mineral Diplomacy with African delegations on the margins of the Spring Meetings. This is not just another side event.

It is a strategic space to:

  • Align African positions ahead of global negotiations
  • Share insights on evolving partners’ industrial and supply chain strategies
  • Strengthening negotiating capacity to secure better deals
  • Advance a collective vision for value addition, industrialization, and sovereignty over resources

In a multipolar world, minerals are no longer just commodities, they are instruments of geopolitical leverage. The question is whether Africa will use them as such.

What Must Change

There will be no shortage of declarations this week. But the IMF’s message is unequivocal: the world has a fiscal space problem, and policy choices are becoming more constrained. In this context, incremental change will not suffice.

Three shifts are essential:

  • From slow and fragmented debt restructuring to predictable and fair solutions
  • From expensive capital to affordable, development-oriented financing
  • From fragmented national positions to coordinated African agency

A Moment for Agency

The global economy is being reshaped in real time. Energy systems are shifting. Financial conditions are tightening. Geopolitics is redefining trade and investment. Moments like this determine who sets the rules, and who lives with them.

Africa has resources, the demographic weight and the strategic relevance. What remains is coordinated action.

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Africa’s Critical Minerals: The G20 Must Choose Partnership Over Extraction

Across Africa’s vast land and ocean floors lie the minerals that will power the world’s green transition, digital revolution, and technological future. These minerals are not the margins of tomorrow’s economy, they are its spine. They determine who builds the cars, manufactures mobile phones, stores the energy, runs the servers, and controls the military and space technologies of the next century.

The Open Society Foundations and partners’ policy discussion today, in the margins of the G20 Summit in Johannesburg generated a solid roadmap! Here are my 7 takeaways:

Africa holds the ingredients of global power at a scale the world cannot ignore. Yet the question confronting the continent is not whether the world needs Africa. It is whether Africa is ready to lead, not follow; to bargain, not beg; to industrialize, not export raw; to become a rule-maker, not just a rule-taker.

As geopolitical tensions intensify, the United States, the European Union, China, and emerging powers are racing to secure long-term access to African minerals, using industrial policies, bilateral deals, and global pressure to reshape supply chains. Africa has become the epicenter of a new global scramble, one fought not with armies, but with subsidies, regulations, Environmental Social Governance standards (ESG), and strategic diplomacy.

This is Africa’s critical minerals moment, not just to be part of the global green transition, but to shape its terms, its industries, and its benefits. What Africa chooses to do now will decide if it becomes a leader in the new green economy, or remains just a place where others come to dig up raw materials.

1. A New Global Scramble, But This Time Africa Must Set the Terms

At the first G20 Summit ever held on to African soil, the continent finds itself at the center of the most consequential geopolitical realignment since the industrial revolution. The race for critical minerals, cobalt, lithium, nickel, graphite, rare earths, has triggered a new scramble, but this time powered by the urgency of the green transition and the anxieties of national security.

The old world is maneuvering aggressively.

  • The United States has unleashed the Inflation Reduction Act, industrial policy whose benefits flow mostly inward.
  • The European Union, facing Chinese dominance in battery and EV manufacturing, has erected its Critical Raw Materials Act; a shield for European industries.
  • China, already controlling 60% of refining and 80% of global battery manufacturing, continues to consolidate its strategic lead.

Meanwhile, Africa, home to 30% of global critical mineral reserves and 70% of the world’s cobalt, remains a marginal actor in the value chain, capturing less than 5% of the wealth generated by the minerals it exports.

2. The G20 in Johannesburg: A Mirror and a Moment

Africa must convert its mineral wealth into negotiating power, or others will convert it for us.

This moment is not just about minerals.
It is about power.
It is about narrative.
It is about agency.
It is about Africa refusing to be the “supplier of last resort” for a green economy built elsewhere.

3. Fragmented Countries Cannot Negotiate with United Continents

A recurring warning emerged from the panels: global powers have learned a tactical truth. It is easier to negotiate with Africa one country at a time, not as a continent.

This is how the “green colonialism” of the 21st century is unfolding: Isolate a government, offer a bilateral MoU, promise investments, small, quick, politically appealing, capture long-term mineral supply, secure value-addition on foreign soil.

This is why Europe’s Global Gateway, and the U.S. Mineral Security Partnership look generous on paper but are deeply strategic in practice. They secure raw materials, not African industrialization.

As one expert warned: “If you isolate Ghana, you get a lithium deal. If you isolate Zimbabwe, you get a cobalt deal. But if Africa stands together, the world must negotiate differently.”

Africa needs bargaining power, bargaining power requires unity, Unity requires political leadership.

4. Industrialization is Not a Smelter. It Is an entire Ecosystem.

One myth must die for Africa to rise: the myth that industrialization is about building a smelter and calling it transformation.

A smelter does not create an economy. It is energy-intensive, capital-heavy, low-employment, and often detached from local needs.

“Africa’s opportunity is not just in the rock. It is in the engineering, logistics, innovation, manufacturing and services around it.”

This is how future could look like:

  • battery precursors in Zambia-DRC,
  • graphite processing in Mozambique,
  • green steel in South Africa,
  • cathode manufacturing in Namibia,
  • electric motorcycle plants in Kenya,
  • solar panel assembly hubs in North Africa
  • and more…

Africa can no longer be told it “lacks markets.” Markets are built, not waited for.
China built its market. Europe built its market. Africa must now build its own.

5. Political Courage: The Missing Ingredient

Many African countries remain trapped by predictable political constraints:, negotiating contracts in secrecy, prioritizing royalties instead of jobs, allowing foreign companies to dictate standards, failing to invest in geological mapping, underfunding universities and technical faculties, ignoring artisanal miners, women, and local communities, and, treating industrial policy as an afterthought rather than a national mission

6. Communities Must Not Become Casualties of the Green Transition

The extractives history of Africa is written in: displaced communities,polluted rivers, gender based violence, corporate impunity, destroyed ecosystems, and broken promises.

The green transition risks repeating all of this, only faster. Communities must be co-owners of the future, not victims of it. This means:

  • Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) must be real, not cosmetic.
  • Women must benefit from mining, not be excluded from it.
  • Royalties must serve communities, not elites; 1% is unacceptable.
  • Environmental assessments must be public, enforceable, and community-driven.
  • Artisanal miners must be supported, not criminalized.

Africa cannot trade justice for development. There is no trade-off. Justice is development.

Our Foundations’ Resource Futures Programme (Opportunity) is clear about rights, transparency, communities, gender equity, and accountability. These are not peripheral; they are central to the industrial future Africa must build.

7. A Roadmap for African Power in the New Mineral Order

Here are what G20 leaders, especially South Africa and the African Union must champion:

An African Critical Minerals Alliance: A continent-wide coalition modeled on the “Lithium Triangle” of Latin America, focused on common standards, coordinated pricing, uniform beneficiation targets, and joint negotiation platforms.

A Pan-African Critical Minerals Fund: Capitalized by AfDB, Afreximbank, African sovereign funds, and diaspora financing to invest in geological mapping, refineries, industrial parks, battery corridors, and African-owned manufacturing ventures.

Continental Standards for Transparency and FPIC: No more secret deals. No more exploitation of communities. No more extractive colonialism wearing green clothing.

Regional Industrial Corridors: Scale is Africa’s currency. No single country can industrialize alone. DRC-Zambia Battery Corridor, Lobito Corridor, and new SADC/EAC/ECOWAS industrial zones must become the backbone of African manufacturing.

A Continental Electrification and Green Mobility Plan: Africa’s minerals must power African energy systems. No industrialization is possible without affordable, reliable energy.

Technology Transfer as a Non-Negotiable: Partnerships that do not share technology are not partnerships. They are extraction agreements.

The world cannot achieve a green transition without Africa, but Africa can fail to benefit from that transition if it hesitates, fragments, or negotiates poorly.

The world needs Africa. Africa must now decide what it needs from the world.

An Influencing Space!

A telling moment at our side event showed just how far our influence is beginning to reach. When a member state steps into a space we created, it is more than participation; it is recognition of our growing authority. This was clear when the representative of the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country central to the world’s cobalt supply, not only attended our critical minerals session but insisted on taking the floor. His intervention underscored a simple truth: the conversations we are driving are now shaping national positions, not just reflecting them.

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