Africa should define its critical minerals based on the resources needed to drive its own industrialisation rather than simply adopting the priorities of major global economies, Bright Simons has argued.
Speaking at the Students and Young Professionals African Liberty Academy (SYPALA) 2026 in Accra, the Honorary Vice-President of IMANI Centre for Policy and Education said African countries need to rethink how they determine which minerals are strategically important.
Mr Simons argued that mineral priorities in the United States, China and other major economies are shaped by their own industrial and strategic requirements and therefore may not correspond with what Africa needs to transform its economies.
“Don’t go and take Russia’s critical mineral list, Americans or China,” he said.
Instead, he said Africa should start with its own industrialisation objectives and determine which minerals are necessary to achieve them.
“The minerals that are valuable for us are the ones that will directly invest to industrialization,” he said.
Mr Simons said this approach requires policymakers to look beyond minerals that dominate the global critical-minerals debate, such as cobalt and lithium, and examine the materials required to build power plants, railways, factories, housing and other infrastructure.
He argued that many of these requirements are linked to conventional industrial minerals, including steel-related inputs, rather than only the minerals commonly associated with the global energy transition.
For Mr Simons, the central question should therefore not simply be whether Africa possesses large quantities of a particular mineral, but whether those resources correspond with the continent’s economic transformation needs.
He said aligning mineral policy with industrialisation would also help African countries identify where investment in exploration, processing and regional supply chains could generate the greatest economic value.
