Africa should abandon the widely cited claim that it holds 30% of the world’s mineral resources and instead focus on finding and developing the industrial minerals needed to build factories, power plants and infrastructure, policy analyst Bright Simons said.
Simons argued that the 30% figure is too loosely defined to provide a useful basis for economic policy because it does not specify which minerals are included or whether the calculation refers to resources, reserves or actual production.
“The idea that 30% of all natural resources, particularly mineral resources, are in Africa is not true,” Simons said at the event.
He said there are about 5,000 mineral species globally and that selecting different groups of minerals can produce dramatically different estimates of Africa’s share. Using 38 of the most traded minerals, he said, Africa’s average share is about 5% by one measure, while the median can reach 40%.
The disparity, according to Simons, demonstrates why headline figures about Africa’s mineral wealth can obscure more important questions about what the continent actually needs to industrialize.
Focus on industrial minerals
Simons said Africa’s strategic priority should be minerals required in large quantities for industrialization, rather than small-volume minerals that command high prices.
Iron ore, coal and lithium are among the minerals he identified as important to industrial development, while noting that Africa generally does not produce enough of several minerals needed for large-scale industrial activity.
He contrasted Tanzania’s dominance in tanzanite with Brazil’s position in iron ore. Tanzania produces almost all of the world’s tanzanite, but annual sales are worth only about $20 million, according to Simons, while Brazil generates roughly $30 billion a year from iron ore.
The distinction matters because infrastructure requires huge volumes of basic industrial materials, he said.
“Small-quantity, high-value minerals, while important, cannot industrialize your country,” Simons said.
The same principle applies to the energy transition, where discussion of critical minerals can overstate the economic importance of particular materials, he said.
A 200-megawatt wind power plant can require more than 245,000 tons of materials, but only a relatively small portion consists of minerals typically classified as critical, according to Simons.
He urged African policymakers to define “critical minerals” according to the continent’s industrialization needs rather than relying on lists developed around the national-security priorities of the US, China, Russia or other major economies.
“Critical to whom?” he asked.
Exploration gap
Africa also needs to reverse a decline in its share of global mineral exploration spending, Simons said.
The continent once accounted for about 15% of global exploration dollars, compared with about 10% currently, he said.
That decline could leave Africa increasingly dependent on discoveries made by outside companies and limit its ability to build domestic mineral supply chains.
Simons proposed treating geological information and mineral exploration data as assets in their own right, allowing investors to develop and commercialize data models that identify potential deposits before committing the billions of dollars typically required for mining.
Under such a system, finding and mapping mineral resources could become economically valuable even before extraction begins.
He warned that companies using advanced technology are already collecting geological data in African countries and developing models elsewhere, potentially leaving African economies without control over information about their own mineral wealth.
Refining is not enough
Simons also challenged the emphasis on building refineries as the principal form of mineral value addition.
Refining can generate relatively little additional value compared with the scale of the underlying commodity, he said.
He cited gold refining as an example, saying the world’s largest gold refinery in Perth, Australia, operates on a net margin of about 0.17%. Ghana’s plan to process locally produced small-scale mining gold could generate only about $32 million in additional value if the activity is limited to refining, compared with roughly $10 billion in gold production.
The greater opportunity, he said, lies in developing industries around mining operations that supply equipment, inputs and intermediate products.
Ghana, for example, has more than a century of gold production but does not manufacture basic iron grinding balls used in mining, despite the potential scale of such an industry, according to Simons.
African governments should therefore pursue a broader approach to mineral value chains that encompasses manufacturing, industrial chemicals, equipment and other services surrounding extraction and processing.
Simons said the continent needs a “360-degree view” of mineral economics rather than focusing narrowly on extraction or incremental refining.
For him, the central issue is not whether Africa can claim a particular percentage of global mineral wealth, but whether its mineral endowment can be converted into productive capacity, manufacturing and higher-value economic activity.
“Hype is not our friend,” Simons said, warning that inflated claims about Africa’s mineral wealth could distract policymakers from the exploration, industrial development and value-chain investments required to turn resources into sustained economic growth.
