Tinubu Seeks African Unity to Protect Continent’s Mineral Wealth

• Charges continent to stop exporting wealth, start profiting from its resources

Deji Elumoye and Folalumi Alaran in Abuja

President Bola Tinubu yesterday canvassed a fresh continental push to end the historical exploitation of Africa’s critical mineral resources, urging African nations to unite and halt the export of raw materials.

He also demanded an aggressive alliance among African countries to ensure the continent transitions from a mere supplier of raw minerals to a hub for local processing, manufacturing, and value addition.

The President made the call on Monday in New York, United States, during the Africa Minerals Stategy Group (AMSG) High-level Roundtable on Critical Minerals Development in Africa held on the sidelines of the ongoing 81st Session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA).

Convened and chaired by President Tinubu, who was represented by Vice President Kashim Shettima, alongside AMSG Chairman and Nigeria’s Minister of Solid Minerals, Dr. Dele Alake, the high-level dialogue, themed, “From Resources to Wealth: Continental Cooperation for Mineral Value Addition, Data Sovereignty, Innovative Financing and Critical Minerals Security,” focuses on transforming the continent’s mineral wealth into sustainable economic growth.

In his address delivered by Shettima, Tinubu told African leaders and other stakeholders that the continent cannot claim to be wealthy while its children wallow in poverty amid mines that enrich the world.

“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 declared.

Tinubu regretted that mineral-rich communities lack infrastructure, jobs, and a stake in their own wealth at a time when global demand for clean energy, AI, and advanced manufacturing has made Africa’s critical minerals—like cobalt, copper, lithium, and rare earth elements—indispensable to global supply chains and economic security.

The answer to such deprivation, he observed, “must be processing, refining, batteries, components, African technologies and competitive skills,” noting that “the worth of a mine must be counted in the lives it improves.

“Jobs, industries, infrastructure, technology transfer, African enterprise participation and prosperity retained across generations must measure our progress from resources to wealth,” he maintained.

The President warned, however, that no African country can achieve this alone, adding that competing through lower royalties, weaker local content, and excessive concessions will only weaken the continent’s negotiating 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.

Back home, Tinubu noted that Nigeria must require local value addition for new mining licenses, strengthen geological data and investor access, organise artisanal miners into cooperatives, combat illegal mining, and improve regulatory accountability

His words: “Revenue rose from approximately N6 billion in 2023 to over N38 billion in 2024 and between N68.1 billion and N70 billion in 2025. Major foreign investment commitments and large-scale lithium processing capacity developed and commissioned in Nasarawa State demonstrate the possibilities.”

He drew attention to his administration’s mining policy direction, which stipulates that minerals extracted in Nigeria must sustain Nigerian industries, workers, skills, and communities, saying ongoing reforms indicate that “firm terms can attract serious capital.”

Offering other African nations the Nigerian experience for adaptation across the continent, the President called for “reliable partnerships grounded in mutual benefit, shared responsibility, sovereign equality and respect for our priorities, with fair market access, industrial investment and technology partnerships that build African capabilities.”

He implored member-countries of the AMSG to speak with one voice to promote Africa’s collective interest, insisting that reliability must never mean dependency, and partnership must never demand inequality.

On the Continental Integration and Economic Assurance Declaration adopted and signed at the Roundtable, Tinubu said it must establish a predictable, investment-ready environment for Africa’s Strategic Mineral Corridors, harmonised policies, responsible investment and shared infrastructure.

According to him, the Declaration’s authority must survive the signing ceremony through a binding programme with timelines, financing, implementation and public accountability, even as he urged African nations to specify national and regional contributions; development finance institutions and sovereign investors to propose financing platforms.

Declaring the Roundtable open, the President spearheaded an aggressive alliance to retain the continent’s mineral wealth, saying, “Africa’s power resides in its people, markets and ingenuity.

“No outsider will organise our continent or place our industrial interests above their own. We must integrate our markets, mobilise African capital and negotiate with one voice wherever our interests converge.

“Our industrial growth can strengthen global prosperity, the energy transition and secure supply chains. Minerals confer no automatic prosperity; vision, investment and industry must earn it. Political will must turn mineral promise into enduring African wealth.”

Earlier, Alake, said the group was proposing a Continental Integration and Economic Assurance Declaration (CIEAD) as a landmark continental framework designed to establish a unified architecture for Africa’s critical and solid minerals value chains.

The strength of the gathering, he explained, reflected the journey and progress made in Africa’s solid minerals sector as manifested in the growth of the AMSG.

Alake urged African countries that have yet to join the group to do so in the bid to ensure synergy of efforts, ideas and resources needed for Africa’s natural resources.

He observed that Africa’s minerals ambitions cannot be realised by policy implementation alone as fully integrated partnership designed across financial transactions and infrastructure development as the way forward.

In his remarks, the Chief Executive Officer of the Africa Finance Corporation, Samaila Zubairu, said African countries could no longer afford to delay industrialisation if the continent must feed, house and clothe its growing population over the next 24 years.

Zubairu called for greater regional cooperation, saying unilateral efforts by individual countries could not address the scale of Africa’s development challenges.

Also speaking, Kenya’s Minister of Blue Economy and Maritime Affairs, Mr. Hassan Ali Joho, underscored the importance of domestic resource mobilisation as a catalyst for solid mineral development in Africa and beyond.

He added that for members of the AMSG to achieve holistic transformation, members must stay transparent, competitive and work towards greater alignment of licensing procedure while respecting the sovereignty of member states of the group.

The roundtable featured discussions involving experts from regional agencies, international institutions and captains of the mining industry.