Africa privileged to $29.5tn mineral wealth – Report
By Elegbede Abiodun
… report reframes the mineral sector through an African development lens.
A new study released by the Africa Finance Corporation has indicated that the continent holds an estimated $29.5tn in mine-site mineral value, representing about 20 per cent of global mineral wealth, yet captures only a fraction of the economic value embedded in this endowment.
In a statement on Monday, the AFC, which supports infrastructural and industry investments on the continent, said that the report reframes the mineral sector through an African development lens, placing industrialisation, infrastructure, and long-term regional demand at the centre of mineral strategy.
The report, launched at Mining Indaba in Cape Town and titled Compendium of Africa’s Strategic Minerals, estimates that $8.6tn of the continent’s mineral wealth remains undeveloped, which is attributed to fragmented geological data, uneven coverage, and limited transparency, which continue to elevate risk perception and constrain investment.
According to the study, improving the availability and quality of geological data is a necessary first step to de-risk projects and unlock exploration capital. The AFC argued that mine site valuations significantly understate Africa’s true mineral potential because they exclude the value created when raw materials are processed into steel, aluminium, fertilisers, batteries and alloys. When measured at the point of industrial use, the report states, Africa’s mineral endowment expands by an order of magnitude, revealing substantial latent value.
Launching the report, AFC President/Chief Executive Officer, Samaila Zubairu, said, “Today, AFC is proud to launch the Compendium of Africa’s Strategic Minerals, an initiative to reframe the sector through an African lens and convert endowment into execution pathways for our collective prosperity. The Compendium maps full value chains and links reserves and production to processing capacity, power and transport infrastructure, and regional industrial corridors, improving data transparency to de-risk exploration, lower the cost of capital, and guide smarter investment into mining and the enabling infrastructure needed for beneficiation and integrated regional value chains.”
The Compendium found that mineral production, enabling infrastructure, and demand rarely co-locate or align at scale and calls for stronger regional planning anchored in Africa’s long-term demand fundamentals. An example is in the steel value chain, where Africa hosts world-class endowments of ferroalloys such as manganese, chromium and nickel, and the iron ore supply is entering a new growth cycle. Yet these supply chains remain commercially tethered to Asian steel cycles rather than Africa’s own development trajectory.
“This exposure is economically costly and can be seen playing out right now. The slowdown in Asian steel demand, linked to China’s property downturn and weaker construction, has transmitted shocks into African mineral markets. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, production quotas have been imposed on cobalt to manage oversupply and collapsing prices. In South Africa, primary steelmaking capacity has shut down amid weak domestic demand, high costs, and fragmented off-take. In Gabon, major manganese operations have periodically suspended production in response to softer alloy demand from Asia. These outcomes are occurring even as Africa continues to expand transport networks, power systems, housing, and industrial capacity that require these materials. The constraint is not a lack of demand but a lack of demand anchoring: the failure to align mineral production, processing capacity, and infrastructure investment around Africa’s long-term material needs,” the report indicated.
The AFC Compendium went on to place infrastructure at the centre of mineral strategy, not as a passive enabler but as the system that links raw materials, processing capacity, and demand. Power cost and reliability, transport connectivity, and access to industrial land ultimately determine whether beneficiation is viable.
To this end, the report mapped mineral deposits and producing assets alongside railways, ports, power generation hubs, and transmission networks to identify where regional value chains can realistically be developed.
It calls for targeted interventions in shared rail corridors and cross-border power transmission, particularly in mineral-rich regions where coordinated infrastructure could unlock scale, reduce delivered costs, and support regional industrial platforms.
Infrastructure is also central to Africa’s competitiveness in a world of green industrialisation. Clean power, efficient logistics, and integrated corridors such as Lobito can reduce carbon intensity and improve access to markets where low-carbon and traceable supply chains are increasingly required.
It highlights emerging momentum across the continent: Angola is developing one of the world’s largest and highest-grade rare earth magnet metal deposits; Mozambique has become a key feedstock anchor for graphite and anode materials; battery-grade manganese sulphate projects are advancing in Southern Africa; and uranium production has resumed in Namibia and Malawi over 2024–25.
