Buried Wealth, Stolen Value: Africa's Critical Minerals Power-Without the Power

Highlights

• Africa supplies over 10% of global critical mineral exports, including 75% of the world’s cobalt, yet exports 96% as raw or lightly processed materials, with refining and profits concentrated in China and other nations.
• The real power in critical minerals lies not in mining but in processing—China refines 60% of global cobalt while Africa lacks the infrastructure, capital, and scale to compete in high-value midstream operations.
• Despite policy ambitions like export bans and AfCFTA, Africa faces a narrow window to shift from a low-value supplier to a true participant before its structural role becomes permanently locked in.

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Africa holds the minerals the world needs—but not the power that comes with them.  This is a takeaway from a new OECD-backed report in draft state (opens in a new tab), authored by Theophilus Acheampong of the European Council on Foreign Relations with collaborators including Sarah Logan, Maddalena Procopio, and Alex Vines. The authors deliver a clear but uncomfortable conclusion: Africa is rich in the minerals driving the global economy—cobalt, lithium, copper, and more—yet remains structurally locked out of the value chains that generate real wealth. Despite supplying over 10% of global critical mineral exports, the continent exports overwhelmingly raw or semi-processed materials, leaving refining, manufacturing, and profits concentrated elsewhere, particularly in China.

A Continent of Plenty, A System of Constraint

Africa’s geological endowment is not in question. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) alone produces roughly three-quarters of the world’s cobalt. South Africa and Gabon dominate manganese. Guinea supplies a quarter of the global bauxite.

Yet this abundance masks a deeper asymmetry. Nearly all exports leave the continent before meaningful transformation. About 24% are raw, and 72% only lightly processed. The high-value stages—refining, magnet production, battery assembly—occur elsewhere.

The result is a familiar pattern: Africa supplies the inputs to the future but captures only a fraction of its rewards.

Where the Real Power Lies

The report makes an implicit but critical point: mining is not where power resides. Processing is.

China refines roughly 60% of the world’s cobalt and dominates multiple midstream segments. Its model is integrated—owning or financing upstream assets in Africa while anchoring processing and manufacturing at home. Western participation, by contrast, remains fragmented and largely confined to extraction. This is not an accident. Refining requires scale, capital, technical expertise, and reliable infrastructure—conditions that remain uneven across much of Africa.

The Invisible Barriers to Value Creation

Four constraints recur throughout the analysis:

• Infrastructure deficits, particularly power and transport
• High capital intensity of midstream and downstream facilities
• Policy volatility and governance gaps
• Structural cost disadvantages versus established processors

Exploration investment, a leading indicator of future supply, has also declined—from 16% of global spend in 2004 to just over 10% today—despite Africa hosting a disproportionate share of new discoveries.  The paradox is striking: the resources are there, but the system to exploit them fully is not.

Policy Dreams, Industrial Realities

African governments are not unaware of the problem. Export bans, local content rules, and new continental frameworks such as the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) aim to push value addition closer to home.

But policy ambition collides with industrial reality. Processing facilities struggle to compete with established global hubs benefiting from cheaper energy, tighter integration, and decades of accumulated expertise.

Even well-intentioned export restrictions risk backfiring—deterring investment or encouraging substitution away from constrained minerals.

A Narrow Window Opens

Demand for critical minerals is rising sharply, driven by electric vehicles, defense systems, and digital infrastructure. The OECD report frames this as a “window of opportunity.” It is—but a narrow one. If Africa can coordinate regionally, invest in infrastructure, and attract capital into midstream processing, it could shift from supplier to participant. If not, it risks reinforcing its role as a low-value node in a high-value system.

What the Report Gets Right—and What It Softens

The analysis is grounded and largely accurate. It correctly identifies:

• The dominance of midstream processing as the true bottleneck
• The structural imbalance between resource ownership and value capture
• The importance of regional coordination over fragmented national strategies

But it is more cautious where it matters most. The geopolitical dimension—particularly China’s entrenched advantage—is acknowledged but understated. So too is the sheer difficulty of building competitive refining capacity in high-cost environments.

The report offers a roadmap. It does not fully grapple with how hard the journey will be.

The Investor’s Lens: Follow the Processing, Not the Ore

For investors, the lesson is simple and often ignored: the value of critical minerals is not in the ground—it is in the system that transforms them.

Africa’s future role will not be determined by how much it mines, but by how much it processes.

Final Thought

The world is racing toward a mineral-intensive future. Africa is central to that race—but not yet in control of it.

The question is no longer whether the continent matters. It is whether it can convert importance into power.

OECD Critical Minerals Forum, Regional Note on Critical Minerals in Africa (2026), authored by Theophilus Acheampong, Sarah Logan, Maddalena Procopio, and Alex Vines, European Council on Foreign Relations