Global demand for Africa’s critical and battery minerals is driving what experts are calling a “new gold rush” on the continent, according to research and advisory firm Moore Global.
Speaking on the sidelines of African Mining Week 2025 in Cape Town, Olivier Barbeau, Managing Partner at Moore Johannesburg, said investor interest in minerals essential for clean energy and digital technologies is surging across Africa.
“Everything that has to do with technology is the new gold rush on the African continent going towards critical minerals,” Barbeau said.
He noted that digitalization is playing a growing role in transforming Africa’s mining sector by streamlining exploration, improving production efficiency, and enhancing worker safety. However, two key challenges — logistics and regulatory stability, continue to weigh on investor confidence.
“We’ve seen significant discussions and progress around logistics across the continent, particularly with improving those logistical corridors from central DRC and out to the ports,” Barbeau said. “This will remain a central theme going forward.”
Barbeau added that because mining remains a capital-intensive industry, global investors are increasingly demanding regulatory certainty before committing to large-scale projects.
“We are engaging with delegates about how they ensure regulatory certainty for the projects they want to invest in, and how they can extract economic returns out of their mining investments,” he said.
Africa holds some of the world’s largest reserves of minerals critical to clean energy technologies, including cobalt, lithium, copper, and rare earth elements, positioning the continent at the center of the global energy transition.
Moore Global said the growing interest from private capital and governments alike underscores both the opportunity and complexity of building sustainable mining value chains across Africa.
Source: Energy Capital & Power.
