By Zainab Bakare
President Bola Tinubu has called on African countries to work together to end the export of raw minerals and retain more value from the continent’s natural resources.
Tinubu, represented by Vice President Kashim Shettima, made the call on Monday at the third Africa Minerals Strategy Group High-Level Roundtable on Critical Minerals Development in Africa.
The roundtable, convened and chaired by Tinubu alongside Minister of Solid Minerals and Chairman of the Africa Minerals Strategy Group, Dele Alake, was held on the sidelines of the ongoing 81st Session of the United Nations General Assembly.
Tinubu said Africa must move beyond supplying raw materials and become a hub for local processing, manufacturing and value addition.
He said mineral-rich communities should benefit through jobs, infrastructure, technology transfer and greater participation in industries built around their resources.
According to Tinubu, growing global demand for critical minerals, driven by clean energy, artificial intelligence and advanced manufacturing, has made Africa’s resources increasingly important to global supply chains.
The President called for more processing, refining, battery production, component manufacturing, African technologies and skills development across the continent.
He also warned against African countries competing through lower royalties, weaker local-content requirements and excessive concessions, saying such fragmentation would weaken the continent’s negotiating power.
Tinubu said Nigeria would require local value addition for new mining licences while strengthening geological data, improving investor access, organising artisanal miners into cooperatives and tackling illegal mining.
He said reforms in the sector had increased mining revenue from about N6 billion in 2023 to more than N38 billion in 2024, and between N68.1 billion and N70 billion in 2025.
Tinubu also pointed to foreign investment commitments and large-scale lithium processing capacity developed and commissioned in Nasarawa State as evidence of the sector’s potential.
Earlier, Alake said the proposed Continental Integration and Economic Assurance Declaration would provide a unified framework for Africa’s critical and solid minerals value chains.
Kenya’s Minister of Blue Economy and Maritime Affairs, Hassan Ali-Joho, also called for greater domestic resource mobilisation, transparency and alignment of licensing procedures to support mineral development across Africa.
