There is a particular kind of energy that fills a room when people stop asking whether a problem exists and start asking what to build instead. I felt that shift this week in Accra, where I have spent two days (27, 28 July 2026) with States actors, advisers to the Presidency of Ghana, continental  and regional institution representatives, civil society and religious leaders, lawyers, private sector actors, journalists, and young people, all of us grappling with one question: how does Africa make sure its critical mineral wealth becomes a foundation for peace, democracy and prosperity, rather than another chapter in the resource curse?

Why We Gathered

We are told Africa holds a third of the world’s known reserves of minerals cobalt, lithium, manganese, coltan, graphite, rare earths, that the global economy now needs to power the transition to clean energy, digital technology and advanced manufacturing. That is an extraordinary opportunity. It is also, as our President Binaifer Nowrojee reminded us in her opening remarks, a profound responsibility, because history has shown repeatedly that natural resource wealth does not automatically translate into human development, democratic progress or peace. Too often, the communities living closest to these resources carry the greatest social and environmental costs while seeing the fewest benefits.

That is the paradox this conference set out to confront. Convened under the banner of governance, critical minerals and conflict, and grounded in a simple but consequential proposition, that the relationship between minerals, peace and development is not predetermined, and that governance is the variable that decides which way it tips; the meeting brought together an unusually broad coalition. Not just the ministries and mining actors who typically populate this conversation, but artisanal miners, women’s networks, youth movements, researchers and peacebuilders who are already doing the work of reimagining the sector from the ground up.

A Governance Crisis Wearing a Resource Costume

If there was a single idea that ran through every session on Day One, it was this: mineral wealth does not create development on its own. Governance is what makes the difference.

Bishop Matthew Kukah’s keynote reframed the conversation from the outset, arguing that resources themselves carry no curse, it is how they are captured, manipulated and instrumentalized by political and external elites that turns opportunity into exploitation. Other speakers built on that provocation. Brian Kagoro described how mineral discoveries tend to concentrate political and economic power around ruling elites, weakening institutions and excluding citizens from decisions that shape their own futures. One phrase from the day’s discussions captured the mood better than any policy paper could: what Africa faces is less a resource curse than a governance crisis wearing a resource costume.

The human cost of that crisis was made vivid through case after case. Suliman Baldo described Sudan’s war as, in his words, a struggle over economic assets in which mining wealth concentrated within military structures helped turn instability into devastating conflict, what he called “Africa’s nightmare.” The Democratic Republic of Congo came up repeatedly as the starkest illustration of what happens when strategic mineral wealth meets weak institutions and armed actors. Across these examples, the lesson was consistent: where governance fails, minerals become drivers of insecurity rather than engines of development.

From Extraction to Transformation

A second thread ran through the day’s discussions: Africa’s long habit of exporting raw materials and importing the finished products made from them. The continent exports bauxite and imports aluminium; exports lithium and cobalt and imports battery components; exports copper and imports the electrical goods made with it. Jerry Ahadjie of the African Development Bank drew a sharp distinction between the old “corridor model” of mine-railway-port-export, and a transformational model in which infrastructure is built to support processing, manufacturing, skills development and community participation before minerals ever leave the continent. The African Development Bank’s new Critical Minerals Accelerator Facility, along with emerging investments in battery manufacturing and processing across Ghana, Morocco, Tanzania, South Africa and the DRC, were offered as early signs that this shift is possible.

Bright Simons pushed the room further, warning against what he called “zombie statistics”,  the often-repeated figures about Africa’s mineral endowment that circulate without rigorous grounding in local data, and that are frequently defined by what Washington, Beijing or Brussels consider “critical” rather than what actually serves African industrialization. His challenge was blunt: Africa cannot negotiate its own future while relying on data, definitions and narratives it does not own.

The Human Face of the Sector

Some of the most powerful interventions came from those who insisted the conversation stay grounded in people. Petronille Vaweka spoke about women in artisanal mining communities performing the most demanding labour, sometimes for as little as a dollar a day, while remaining largely absent from the negotiations and decisions that shape their working lives. Rachael Mwikali spoke to the growing role of young people, women and grassroots digital activists in demanding accountability from the ground up. Awa Baldé, drawing on international human rights frameworks, reminded us that consultation is not the same as genuine participation, and warned of growing threats against environmental defenders. The message that emerged, again and again: communities cannot keep bearing the costs of extraction while others capture the benefits.

Strategy Labs: Turning Diagnosis into Design

Day Two moved the conversation from analysis to design, through parallel Strategy Labs that asked participants to translate the previous day’s diagnosis into concrete recommendations.

I had the privilege of contributing to several of these conversations directly, one on livelihood security and local development, and another, which I helped report back to plenary, on industrialization, economic sovereignty and what we framed as “Transforming Africa’s Development: The Moment, Critical Mineral Industrialization and Economic Sovereignty.”

That lab surfaced a hard truth: Africa is not short of policy commitments. Frameworks like the African Mining Vision, Africa Green Mineral Strategy and the African Mining and Development Centre already exist. What is missing is the machinery to hold governments accountable to them, and the regional solidarity needed to negotiate contracts from a position of strength rather than country by country. We also flagged the disconnect between universities and industry, and between mining and manufacturing, as quiet but persistent obstacles to building real value chains on the continent. Our recommendations, a continental mechanism to monitor implementation of existing commitments, a coordinated African negotiating position backed by pooled legal capacity, stronger links between government, academia and industry, and a renewed push for local procurement and processing, echoed strongly with what other labs were hearing in parallel rooms on livelihoods, conflict prevention and regional cooperation.

Across all four labs, certain recommendations kept resurfacing regardless of which room they came from: publish mining contracts and make ownership traceable; invest in African-owned geological data; build community benefit-sharing frameworks with real teeth; support strategic litigation where communities have been denied redress; strengthen community-based conflict early-warning systems; and above all, anchor everything in an Accra Declaration backed by a genuine monitoring and evaluation mechanism, so that this conference produces a living commitment rather than another report that gathers dust.

A Conversation the World Could See: None of this would have carried the way it has without the work happening just outside the conference rooms. Ruth Omondi, our communication champion and her team of journalists made sure this gathering did not stay contained within Accra’s walls. Through a steady stream of interviews and media engagement, they carried these conversations on governance, on conflict, on the future of Africa’s mineral wealth, out to a much wider public than the delegates in the room. That visibility matters. A conference like this only becomes a turning point if the ideas it produces reach the people, governments and institutions who were not there to hear them firsthand, and Ruth’s team has made sure they have.

What Comes Next: As I write this, the conference is moving into its final day of synthesis, turning three days of rich, sometimes uncomfortable, always urgent conversation into a shared framework and a set of commitments that African governments, regional institutions and civil society can be held to. The line that has stayed with me from the Day One recap by my colleague Tem Mbuh is this: “history will not remember us for the resources beneath our soil. It will remember us for what we chose to build with them”.

That is the work now in front of all of us, and it is why Open Society Foundations came to Accra to help convene this conversation, and why we will stay engaged long after we leave Accra.