The Federal Government and the African Development Bank have called for stronger African control over the continent’s vast mineral resources, saying Africa must stop allowing its natural wealth to leave its shores in raw form while importing finished products made from the same resources.
The call was made by the Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Dele Alake, at the Ministerial Forum on Critical Minerals, Value Chain and Beneficiation: Pathways for African Transformation, organised under the auspices of the African Development Bank in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire.
Alake also called for the establishment of a West African minerals processing corridor stretching from Lagos to Dakar and modelled on the Lobito Corridor in Central and Southern Africa.
This was contained in a statement issued on Sunday by the minister’s Special Assistant on Media, Lara Owoeye-Wise.
The forum brought together more than 20 ministers responsible for mining, energy, industry, natural resources and the green economy, as well as representatives of development finance institutions, international banks and mining companies.
Speaking at the forum, the minister urged African countries to move beyond isolated national approaches and develop a coordinated strategy for controlling, processing and deriving greater value from the continent’s mineral wealth.
Alake, who is the pioneer chairman of the Africa Mineral Strategy Group, said Africa’s mineral resources could deliver far greater economic benefits if countries worked together to develop shared infrastructure, regional value chains and common standards.
“While the mantra of value addition has ushered in an era of economic independence for mineral-producing nations, we need concrete, actionable strategies to take charge and be in full control of our natural assets to ensure total economic freedom,” he said.
The minister said African countries needed to achieve sovereignty not only over their mineral resources but also over the data and technical systems used to assess the value of those resources.
He criticised the continent’s continued dependence on foreign reporting standards for mineral exploration and reserves, arguing that Africa must develop and adopt systems that reflect its own geological, environmental and economic realities.
“For the overall interest of the continent, and to efficiently and effectively safeguard its resources, Africa should take charge of the coding mechanisms utilised to assess its mineral assets,” Alake said.
He advocated the adoption of the Pan-African Resource Reporting Code, a framework established by the Africa Minerals Development Centre for the public reporting of mineral and energy resources.
According to him, the system would promote transparency, consistency and ethical competence in the certification of mineral resources while taking into account the peculiar geological and environmental characteristics of African countries.
He further called for the establishment of a West African minerals processing corridor stretching from Lagos to Dakar, modelled on the Lobito Corridor in Central and Southern Africa.
He said the corridor would enable countries in the region to specialise in processing particular minerals while sharing infrastructure, investment risks and the benefits of mineral development.
The proposed arrangement, he said, would reduce the enormous financial burden of developing separate processing facilities in every country and promote cross-border trade and industrial cooperation.
The minister said African countries needed to replace competition among themselves with strategic interdependence.
He noted that the continent’s mineral resources were distributed across different countries, making regional cooperation essential to building commercially viable value chains.
The proposed Lagos-Dakar corridor is also in line with Nigeria’s broader ambition to position itself as a regional hub for mineral processing, industrial development and value addition.