In our continuing series unpacking Bright Simons’ mineral strategy trilogy, the focus now shifts from national design flaws to regional coordination, experimentation, and scalable digital governance.
Part 2 argued that the next contest over Africa’s subsoil will be won with algorithms rather than excavators, Part 3 asks: how can states work together to make those algorithms truly effective, across borders, across minerals, and without exposing fragile economies to unnecessary fiscal risk?
In his paper, Getting Smart about Africa’s Mineral Wealth, drawn from his wider trilogy first developed during a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio residency and refined with the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), Simons presents a pragmatic path: start with low-stakes minerals, pilot harmonised digital rules, and expand regionally.
The proposal is deceptively simple. Instead of testing reforms on gold or lithium, politically and fiscally sensitive, states can begin with feldspar, an industrial mineral important to the economy but not existential. Feldspar becomes a sandbox for experimentation: rules are encoded digitally, royalties are automatically computed, and compliance is auditable. Lessons learned here can then be applied to higher-stakes minerals, limiting risk while proving the approach.
The regional angle is key. West Africa’s fragmented fiscal regimes have long created opportunities for under-invoicing and loophole exploitation. By harmonising digital rules across WAEMU and ECOWAS, states can align incentives, reduce cross-border arbitrage, and create predictable revenue streams, all while keeping enforcement transparent and accountable.
At the core is Simons’ Rules as Code framework. Fiscal regulations are expressed in machine-readable, version-controlled code alongside the legal text. Marginal price changes produce proportional fiscal outcomes. Policy drift is minimised. Investors, governments, and civil society can see outcomes in real time. Governance becomes computable and auditable, not merely declaratory.
Geological data itself is elevated to strategic infrastructure. National Data Clouds let African states retain sovereignty over their exploration intelligence, preventing foreign AI systems from extracting value from scattered datasets. Knowledge compounds locally, investment decisions improve, and information becomes the true currency of mineral wealth.
By piloting harmonised digital governance in a controlled, low-risk environment, Africa can reimagine mineral sovereignty at scale. What begins as a feldspar experiment today can become a regional framework tomorrow, smarter, fairer, and more resilient than analogue mining regimes.
Bright underlines that the minerals themselves are finite, but intelligence is limitless. Africa’s competitive edge will come not from digging deeper, but from governing smarter, sharing insights, and coordinating regionally.
The next series will explore how digital public infrastructure, fiscal redesign, and cross-border cooperation can transform West Africa from a passive rent-taker into an active architect of its mineral future.
