The global competition for critical minerals is entering a new phase.
For much of the past decade, governments and investors have focused on securing access to lithium, cobalt, graphite, nickel and rare earth elements to support the energy transition.
This has given rise to initiatives such as the United States-led Minerals Security Partnership, now succeeded by the Forum on Resource Geostrategic Engagement (FORGE), the European Union's Critical Raw Materials Act and the RESourceEU Action Plan.
The assumption behind many of these initiatives is that securing access to minerals by acquiring mining assets is essential to securing the industries of the future.
While this is true in some respect, the latest International Energy Agency (IEA) Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2026 suggests that the reality is more complicated. Owning mineral deposits does not, by itself, confer strategic power.
Increasingly, influence comes from controlling what happens after extraction, which includes processing, refining, advanced manufacturing, technology and trade.
For Africa, this should prompt serious reflections.
The continent possesses an extraordinary share of the world's critical mineral wealth.
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) dominates global cobalt production, while Zambia remains indispensable to copper supply and Zimbabwe occupies an important position in the global lithium supply chain.
Similarly, South Africa is central to platinum group metals and manganese, while Namibia is emerging as an important producer of uranium and rare earth elements.
Guinea remains the world's largest exporter of bauxite, a mineral essential to the aluminium industry.
These resources make Africa increasingly important to the global energy transition, but we should be careful not to confuse strategic importance with strategic advantage.
Export restrictions are not sufficient
Across Africa, governments are increasingly using export restrictions to pursue strategic objectives, including industrialisation and domestic value addition.
So far, about 13 African countries have introduced export restrictions, bans or beneficiation requirements.
These include leading critical mineral producers such as Namibia, Botswana, Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and the DRC.
In 2025, Malawi also banned raw mineral exports. There is a reasonable economic argument behind some of these measures.
Restricting exports can make raw materials more readily available to domestic processors and, under certain circumstances, provide an indirect cost advantage to downstream industries.
The policy logic is understandable, particularly given that resource-rich countries have historically exported raw materials while importing finished products.
My concern, however, is what happens when governments introduce export restrictions without first building the industrial capacity to support them.
An export ban without affordable electricity, transport infrastructure, technical skills, access to finance, processing facilities and predictable regulation may simply delay exports rather than create industries.
This is where I think African governments should be cautious about copying Indonesia as ‘the model’.
Indonesia's nickel export ban is frequently cited as an example for other countries seeking to promote domestic processing. But the export ban did not operate in isolation.
While it was not perfect, Indonesia accompanied it with significant investment in industrial parks such as Morowali and Weda Bay, as well as power, ports, roads and other infrastructure.
These investments reduced the cost and risk of establishing processing capacity in Indonesia.
The policy, therefore, formed part of a wider industrial strategy.
I, therefore, caution African policymakers against overlooking the institutional and financial foundations that made Indonesia's approach possible.
An export restriction can create an incentive to process locally but needs to be accompanied by investments (sometimes from the state) in electricity, infrastructure, technology, skills or markets where these do not exist.
Geological power also matters
There is another important factor that governments should consider when using export restrictions to promote local value addition: how much control does the country actually have over the global market for the mineral? Indonesia occupies a strong position in global nickel markets, with substantial reserves and a dominant share of global nickel production.
That gives it considerably more bargaining power than many African producers possess in their respective mineral markets.
The DRC, which produces more than 70 per cent of the world's cobalt and holds the largest cobalt reserves globally, also occupies a different position from many other African producers.
When the DRC restricted cobalt exports in 2025, starting with a blanket ban in February and moving to a strict quota system in October, global supplies tightened sharply.
Major miners such as Glencore stockpiled output and declared force majeure, contributing to a significant decline in intermediate shipments to major refiners such as those in China.
The global cobalt prices subsequently surged from a nine-year low of roughly US$21,000 per tonne to more than US$48,000.
That demonstrated a form of strategic power and the ability of a major producer to influence global supply and prices.
The same price impact cannot automatically be expected from every African producer.
Zimbabwe's sudden February 2026 restrictions on raw minerals and lithium concentrate, for example, had an immediate impact on global lithium supply chains because Zimbabwe had become a significant supplier of spodumene into China.
The disruption created feedstock shortages for Chinese battery supply chains and contributed to a sharp market reaction.
But the restrictions also created revenue pressures for the Zimbabwean government as some operations were suspended.
These are important factors for governments to consider. Before imposing export restrictions, policymakers need to understand both their geological position and their market position. A country with a relatively small share of global reserves may have much less ability to dictate market conditions. An ambitious export restriction could, therefore, create unintended consequences for domestic producers, investors, workers and government revenues without materially changing global market dynamics.
Technology can change the value of a mineral
Governments must also consider how quickly technology is changing. Chemists and materials scientists are increasingly developing technologies that reduce or eliminate the use of particular minerals and metals.
The push towards cobalt-free battery chemistry, for example, has moved from a theoretical objective to a market reality, particularly through the rapid expansion of lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries.
The same applies to lithium as sodium-ion batteries gain commercial attention.
Sodium is considerably more abundant than lithium, and advances in sodium-ion technology could eventually reduce demand for lithium in some applications.
This raises a difficult question for governments that require companies to invest billions of dollars in processing facilities: How long will the mineral retain its strategic value?
Current market projections may indicate strong demand for lithium and cobalt over the next 10 to 15 years.
But disruptive technology moves quickly, and if new technologies reduce dependence on particular minerals, countries could find themselves with expensive processing infrastructure built around commodities whose strategic value has declined.
This does not mean African governments should avoid beneficiation. It means they need to consider the sustainability and flexibility of the investments they are encouraging.
The writer is a Senior Research Fellow of the Africa-China Centre for Policy and Advisory (Zimbabwe)
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Instead of requiring every mining company to construct its own processing plant, governments could support shared facilities capable of processing feedstock from multiple producers.
Such an approach could create economies of scale and reduce the risk of underutilised infrastructure.
Zimbabwe provides an interesting example.
The Ministry of Mines and Mining Development has encouraged Prospect Lithium Zimbabwe to process lithium ore from other producers through its newly built sulphate processing plant.
However, the company has maintained that it designed the facility around its own ore and does not have the capacity to process material from other producers.
Had the government planned with companies well ahead, miners might have pooled resources to construct shared facilities.
This also illustrates the difficulty of designing beneficiation policy without considering the commercial realities of individual processing facilities.
To be continued
The writer is a Senior Research Fellow of the Africa-China Centre for Policy and Advisory (Zimbabwe)
Email:
