Nigeria and the African Development Bank (AfDB) have intensified calls for local mineral processing and value addition as regulators tighten environmental, social, and governance (ESG) expectations for mining companies in a bid to reposition Africa’s mining sector for sustainable industrialisation.
The stakeholders made the call at the just-concluded fifth edition of the African Natural Resources and Energy Summit (AFNIS) in Abuja, where policymakers, regulators, and development finance institutions urged African countries to end the export of raw minerals, deepen regional value chains, and strengthen community participation in mining projects.
Speaking at the summit, Kevin Urama, vice president and chief economist of the African Development Bank (AfDB), urged African countries to abandon the long-standing model of exporting unprocessed minerals and instead build regional mineral value chains capable of driving industrialisation, job creation, and technological development.
According to him, infrastructure investments across the continent should be redesigned to support manufacturing and intra-African trade rather than facilitate the extraction and shipment of raw commodities.
“We need to link up corridors that connect markets within Africa instead of building infrastructure mainly for extraction,” Urama said.
