Africa Critical Minerals: How the Continent Aims to Turn Its Geological Wealth into a High-Value Industry

The global energy transition has made so-called "critical" minerals — cobalt, lithium, copper, manganese, rare earths — a major geostrategic issue. Africa, which holds a significant share of known global reserves, particularly in Democratic Republic of Congo, South Africa, and Zimbabwe, finds itself at the center of this resource race. According to African Business, the ABIS2026 summit will bring together participants to discuss how the continent can "reap dividends" from this windfall, shifting from raw extraction to local processing, regional integration, and investment. However, the source content, promotional in nature, cites no named speakers or precise numerical data to support the "trillion-dollar" potential mentioned in the title — an order of magnitude to be considered as a projection, not an established fact. The challenge is concrete for producer countries: capture more added value locally rather than exporting raw ore, create industrial jobs, and reduce dependency on commodity price cycles. Fundamentally, the success of this shift will depend on internal factors — mining governance, energy and logistics infrastructure, effective implementation of the AfCFTA for regional integration — combined with external factors: Sino-Western rivalry to secure supply chains, and global interest rates weighing on