President Bola Tinubu has called for an aggressive continental alliance to end the export of Africa’s critical minerals in raw form and promote local processing, manufacturing and value addition.
Tinubu made the call in New York, United States, at the Africa Minerals Strategy Group (AMSG) High-Level Roundtable on Critical Minerals Development in Africa, held on the sidelines of the 81st Session of the United Nations General Assembly.
The high-level dialogue, convened and chaired by Tinubu, with Vice President Kashim Shettima and AMSG Chairman and Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Dr Dele Alake, focused on transforming Africa’s mineral resources into sustainable economic growth. It was themed: “From Resources to Wealth: Continental Cooperation for Mineral Value Addition, Data Sovereignty, Innovative Financing and Critical Minerals Security.”
In an address delivered by Shettima, Tinubu said Africa could not claim to be wealthy while its mineral-rich communities remained poor and lacked infrastructure, jobs and meaningful participation in the resources extracted from their environment.
“For generations, Africa has furnished the materials of prosperity elsewhere. Our duty is to ensure that the future being fashioned from African minerals has room for African ambition,” Tinubu said.
He said the growing global demand for critical minerals, driven by clean energy, artificial intelligence and advanced manufacturing, had made resources such as cobalt, copper, lithium and rare earth elements strategically important to global supply chains.
The President said Africa’s response should be centred on processing, refining, battery production, components, African technologies and competitive skills, stressing that the value of mining should be measured by its impact on citizens.
He said jobs, industries, infrastructure, technology transfer, African enterprise participation and prosperity retained across generations should be the benchmarks for measuring progress from mineral resources to wealth.
Tinubu warned that no African country could achieve the transformation alone, saying competition through lower royalties, weaker local-content requirements and excessive concessions would undermine the continent’s collective bargaining power.
“Fragmentation leaves us exporting raw materials and buying finished goods at a premium. Cooperation gives our markets scale, our industries integration, our financing reach and our negotiations authority,” he said.
On Nigeria’s experience, Tinubu said the Federal Government was pursuing reforms requiring local value addition for new mining licences, strengthening geological data and investor access, organising artisanal miners into cooperatives, combating illegal mining and improving regulatory accountability.
He said government revenue from the mining sector had increased from about N6 billion in 2023 to more than N38 billion in 2024, and to between N68.1 billion and N70 billion in 2025.
The President also cited major foreign investment commitments and the development and commissioning of large-scale lithium processing capacity in Nasarawa State as evidence of the possibilities created by the reforms.
Tinubu said Nigeria’s mining policy was designed to ensure that minerals extracted in the country contributed to Nigerian industries, workers, skills and communities, adding that the reforms demonstrated that firm terms could attract serious investment.
He offered Nigeria’s experience to other African countries for adaptation and called for partnerships based on mutual benefit, shared responsibility, sovereign equality and respect for national priorities.
The President urged AMSG member countries to speak with one voice in promoting Africa’s collective interests, stressing that reliability must not become dependency and partnership must not result in inequality.
On the Continental Integration and Economic Assurance Declaration (CIEAD) adopted and signed at the roundtable, Tinubu said it should provide a predictable and investment-ready framework for Africa’s Strategic Mineral Corridors through harmonised policies, responsible investment and shared infrastructure.
He said the declaration must go beyond a signing ceremony and be backed by a binding programme with clear timelines, financing, implementation mechanisms and public accountability.
Tinubu also called on African countries to specify their national and regional contributions, while urging development finance institutions and sovereign investors to propose financing platforms for the initiative.
Declaring the roundtable open, the President said Africa’s strength lay in its people, markets and ingenuity, urging the continent to integrate its markets, mobilise African capital and negotiate collectively where its interests converge.
“Minerals confer no automatic prosperity; vision, investment and industry must earn it. Political will must turn mineral promise into enduring African wealth,” he said.
Earlier, Alake, who chairs the AMSG and is Nigeria’s Minister of Solid Minerals Development, said the group was proposing CIEAD as a continental framework for creating a unified architecture for Africa’s critical and solid minerals value chains.
Alake said the participation at the gathering reflected the progress made by Africa’s solid minerals sector and the growth of the AMSG.
He urged African countries that had yet to join the group to do so, saying greater membership would strengthen cooperation in ideas, resources and efforts towards developing the continent’s mineral wealth.
According to him, Africa’s mineral ambitions could not be achieved through policy implementation alone, but required integrated partnerships covering financing, infrastructure development and other critical areas.
Kenya’s Minister of Blue Economy and Maritime Affairs, Hassan Ali Joho, stressed the importance of domestic resource mobilisation as a catalyst for solid mineral development in Africa.
Joho said AMSG members must pursue transparency, competitiveness and greater alignment of licensing procedures while respecting the sovereignty of individual member states.
Representatives of the governments of Liberia, Chad and Tanzania, among other stakeholders, also contributed to the discussions.
