President Bola Tinubu has called on African countries to strengthen continental cooperation and end the export of raw critical minerals without local processing and value addition.
Tinubu made the call on Monday in New York, where he was represented by Vice-President Kashim Shettima at the 3rd Africa Minerals Strategy Group (AMSG) High-Level Roundtable on Critical Minerals Development in Africa.
The roundtable, convened and chaired by Tinubu alongside the AMSG Chairman and Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Dr Dele Alake, was held on the sidelines of the 81st Session of the United Nations General Assembly.
With the theme, “From Resources to Wealth: Continental Cooperation for Mineral Value Addition, Data Sovereignty, Innovative Financing and Critical Minerals Security”, the meeting focused on strategies for transforming Africa’s mineral resources into sustainable economic growth.
Tinubu urged African countries to move from being exporters of raw minerals to becoming centres for processing, manufacturing and value addition.
He said Africa could not claim to be wealthy while mineral-rich communities continued to lack infrastructure, jobs and meaningful participation in the wealth generated from their resources.
“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,” he said.
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Tinubu noted that growing global demand for clean energy, artificial intelligence and advanced manufacturing had increased the strategic importance of Africa’s critical minerals.
He said the continent’s response should include processing and refining facilities, battery and component manufacturing, technology development and skills acquisition.
“The worth of a mine must be counted in the lives it improves,” he said.
The President stressed that no African country could achieve meaningful transformation of its mineral sector alone, warning that competition based on lower royalties, weak local content requirements and excessive concessions could undermine the continent’s 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.
Tinubu cited Nigeria’s mining reforms, including requirements for local value addition in new mining licences, improved geological data, the organisation of artisanal miners into cooperatives, measures against illegal mining and stronger regulatory accountability.
He said revenue from the sector had risen from about N6 billion in 2023 to more than N38 billion in 2024 and between N68.1 billion and N70 billion in 2025.
He also cited major foreign investment commitments and the development and commissioning of large-scale lithium processing capacity in Nasarawa State as evidence of the opportunities created by the reforms.
Tinubu said the administration’s mining policy was designed to ensure that minerals extracted in Nigeria supported local industries, workers, skills development and host communities.
He urged AMSG members to promote reliable partnerships based on mutual benefit, shared responsibility, sovereign equality and respect for African priorities.
The President also called for a common continental position on critical minerals, saying African countries needed to integrate their markets, mobilise domestic capital and negotiate collectively where their interests converged.
On the Continental Integration and Economic Assurance Declaration (CIEAD) adopted at the roundtable, Tinubu said it should provide a predictable and investment-ready framework for Africa’s strategic mineral corridors.
He called for the declaration to be backed by clear timelines, financing arrangements, implementation mechanisms and public accountability beyond its signing.
Earlier, Alake said the CIEAD was designed to establish a unified framework for Africa’s critical and solid mineral value chains.
He urged countries that had yet to join the AMSG to do so, stressing the need for greater coordination of efforts, ideas and resources in developing the continent’s mineral sector.
Alake said Africa’s mineral ambitions could not be achieved through policy implementation alone, but required integrated partnerships covering financing, infrastructure and industrial development.
Kenya’s Minister of Blue Economy and Maritime Affairs, Hassan Ali-Joho, also called for greater domestic resource mobilisation to drive solid mineral development.
He said AMSG members needed to promote transparency, competitiveness and greater harmonisation of licensing procedures to achieve sustainable transformation of the sector.
