Curbs on raw minerals exports by more than a dozen African countries are unlikely to kickstart home-grown processing industries unless they are accompanied by major investments in energy infrastructure, private sector partnerships and regional cooperation, mining analysts say.
Last month, Zimbabwe became the latest African country to announce new restrictions, banning the export of all raw minerals and lithium concentrates. So far, at least 13 African countries have enacted export curbs since 2023 as they seek to add value to their exports and create local jobs by processing and refining minerals domestically.
Zimbabwe, Africa’s top producer of lithium, which is used to make batteries for electric vehicles (EVs) and renewable energy storage, wants its resources of the silvery-white metal to be processed into higher-grade compounds such as lithium sulphate, an intermediate product that can be refined into a battery-grade material, rather than exported as raw concentrate for refining elsewhere.
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Government officials say adding value to mineral resources locally is a way to boost economic growth and fund social development. “Government remains committed to ensuring transparency, in-country value addition and beneficiation, compliance, and accountability in the exportation of Zimbabwe’s mineral resources,” said Polite Kambamura, the country’s minister of mines and mining development.
Done correctly, curbs on raw material shipments may encourage development, said Namibia-based public policy researcher Suzie Shefeni.
“A ban like this can serve development interests if it is [firstly], systematically and gradually implemented and backed by appropriate legal mechanisms and [secondly] done in collaboration with the private sector,” Shefeni said.
Restrictions alone won’t ensure added value
But others say that laying the groundwork for viable processing industries will take time and money.
The continent has “not considered everything that is needed for value addition and beneficiation to happen”, said Obert Bore, critical minerals expert and programme manager at the Zimbabwe Environmental Law Organisation, a Harare-based NGO.
“From a private sector perspective, when you speak to mining companies they will tell you these export bans do not work because we don’t have enough water, we don’t have enough energy,” Bore told Climate Home News.
Silas Olan’g, Africa energy transition advisor at the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI), said that while the intention behind export curbs is understandable, “experience shows that bans alone rarely deliver the desired outcomes”.
For export bans to work, he said governments must first put the right conditions in place, including reliable energy, supporting infrastructure, investment incentives and strong governance. Without these fundamentals, “such restrictions can inadvertently undermine the very value addition they seek to achieve”, he said.
Given these constraints, Olan’g argued that “export bans are not the right tool at this stage if the fundamentals are not in place” and could prove “counterproductive”. Instead, governments should use contracts with buyers to secure commitments on infrastructure, skills and technology transfer, building the foundations for value addition before imposing restrictions.
“Without skills, infrastructure, and reliable energy, local value addition cannot take off simply because exports are restricted” Olan’g said.
High price of added value
Africa is a major supplier of minerals needed for the global energy transition. The continent holds about 30% of the world’s critical mineral reserves, including lithium, cobalt and copper. The Democratic Republic of Congo produces roughly 70% of global cobalt, a key ingredient in lithium-ion batteries, while countries such as Guinea dominate bauxite production and Mozambique and Tanzania hold significant graphite deposits.
Zimbabwe exported more than 1.1 million metric tons of lithium-bearing spodumene concentrate in 2025. However with the recent move to ban exports, Bore said lithium processing requires huge quantities of energy and water, putting further strain on scarce supplies in Zimbabwe, which is prone to drought and has a hefty power deficit that causes prolonged outages.
The southern African nation, which initially banned exports of unprocessed lithium ore in 2022, before extending that to lithium concentrates last month, aims to provide 20% of global supplies.
Processing just one metric ton of lithium can require more than 50,000 litres of water, Bore said, meaning ramped-up activity by producers could significantly impact local communities and other economic sectors.
“In Zimbabwe at least, we are seeing significant impact on communities that will no longer have water, we are running out of water for our agriculture, for livestock because the companies are trying to comply with the government ban and by trying to comply they are drawing huge amounts of water just to process one ton of lithium which is not a lot,” he said.
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Energy is another major constraint for African nations intent on adding value to their critical minerals exports.
In Zimbabwe, Bore said half of the country’s electricity is already used by the mining sector.
However, officials say the country’s lithium boom is already delivering economic gains with export earnings from lithium surging to over $200 million in September of 2023, up from $70 million the year before. The sector has also attracted more than $1 billion in foreign investment, largely from Chinese firms developing mines and battery-material processing plants in the country.
One way of addressing the power deficit would be for governments to make less costly and faster renewable energy development an integral part of the plans for the mining sector, said Namibia-based Shefeni.
“(They) should prioritise a trajectory of green beneficiation by promoting the use of renewables including solar PV and wind, in their value addition systems,” she said.
Skirting the rules
If the right conditions are not in place for mining companies to comply with processing requirements, export bans run the risk of being bypassed, according to Bore.
Bans on exporting raw lithium have been introduced gradually since 2023, but Bore’s research suggests compliance remains weak.
“There are leakages. People are not complying because we don’t have the capacity, we don’t have the water, we don’t have the energy,” he said.
He added that complicated licensing processes are also creating opportunities for corruption.
“If the system is not conducive, it creates a breeding ground for corruption because people are trying to get licences and permits, and sometimes those licences end up in the wrong hands,” he said.
If African countries are to foster the development of mineral-processing industries, they will need to implement appropriate regulations, Shefeni said.
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The development of a comprehensive mining land registry could help countries minimise the scope for illegality and smuggling. Integrating the registry with geospatial mapping and production reporting would allow authorities to compare reported output with export declarations.
“This requires investment into a strong enforcement system that can hold offenders accountable by the law,” she said.
Unified Africa vs bilateral deals
Speaking during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Wamkele Mene, secretary-general of the African Continental Free Trade Area Secretariat, said African nations risk missing out on the opportunities offered by the global race for critical minerals if they do not coordinate their approach.
Echoing Mene’s call, Sierra Leone’s President Julius Maada Bio lamented: “We do not have collective bargaining power as a continent.”
Export bans by individual countries risk weakening their bargaining power by negotiating separately with international partners, rather than forming a common stance with other African nations in negotiating with major partners such as China, Bore said.
“We don’t have leverage doing it individually,” he said. He argued that African countries should stop speaking individually and instead present a united front. By highlighting the continent’s vast resources – copper in Zambia, cobalt in the DRC, lithium in Zimbabwe and Nigeria, bauxite in Guinea and iron in Mali – they could push for industries to be built locally and add value to these materials.
In that scenario, he said, China could respond and say “OK fine, you have the resources, you have the market. We can give you the technology, we will train your people and we can develop your skills.”
Shefeni also called for a greater focus on regional value chains, with “individual countries assessing how they are well positioned to contribute”.
NRGI’s Olan’g added that fragmented negotiations only “allow external partners to play countries against each other, leading to weaker commitments on infrastructure, skills, and technology transfer”.
“A unified Africa could pool demand, create economies of scale for smelters and refineries, and set common rules that strengthen governance and investor confidence,” he added.
The post Africa needs more than export bans to cash in on critical minerals, experts say appeared first on Climate Home News.
Africa needs more than export bans to cash in on critical minerals, experts say
An older teaching about land acknowledgement
As I have come to understand the spirit and intention of land acknowledgement, I often return to fond memories of my grandmother and her words of wisdom. She taught that the health of the places we call home comes first, because the wellbeing of the people depends on it.
In her teaching, land acknowledgement began with the land. Long before it became a paragraph read at the start of a meeting, it was a way of recognizing a homeland: its waters, its species, its seasons, and the spirit that revealed whether the place was well.
Her teaching echoes a practice found across many Indigenous Nations. Haudenosaunee gatherings, for example, have long opened with the Ohén:ton Karihwatéhkwen, the Thanksgiving Address, often translated as “the words that come before all else.” The speaker greets and gives thanks to the people, the earth, the waters, the plants, the animals, the winds, the sun, the moon and the stars. Only after everything that sustains life has been acknowledged does the gathering turn to its own business.
That order changes what an acknowledgement is for. Its purpose was to share the story of a place with neighbours and to draw them into the work of tending it. People entered the story second, as the ones responsible for what had just been named.
Understood this way, an acknowledgement does more than open a meeting. It asks us to reconsider where we stand, and what we owe the ground beneath us.
Nations among nations
In her teaching, people are one nation among many. The salmon are a nation. So are the cedars, the bison, the medicine plants, and the pollinators. Each belongs to a place, carries its own responsibilities, and offers gifts no other nation can give.
This idea of kinship runs through many Indigenous philosophies. The phrase “all my relations,” heard in ceremonies and gatherings across Turtle Island, is a reminder that family extends beyond people to the animals, plants, waters and lands that make life possible. Some Indigenous languages carry the same understanding in their grammar, speaking of many plants, animals and natural forces as living beings rather than objects.
Sovereignty, understood through this relationship, is a kind of standing more than a form of control. Each nation belongs fully to its place and carries its share of that place’s life. No nation thrives alone, and none thrives by taking over the whole.
The land is also the source of instruction. Over generations, people watched how a river valley or a stretch of prairie kept itself well: who arrived when, who fed whom, and how much could be taken before the giving stopped. In my grandmother’s telling, those observations became instructions, and those instructions helped shape law and protocol. They guided when to harvest, where to camp, how to enter a neighbour’s territory, and what was owed in return.
Indigenous legal scholars today often describe this as law that comes from the land itself, learned by watching how living systems sustain one another. A plainer name for it is knowing how to live somewhere.
The host and the guest
One of the clearest teachings in this understanding of the world is the relationship between host and guest. My grandmother invited us to recognize that relationship in the lives of plants and animals.
A host prepares the place before anyone arrives. A beaver family dams a stream, and the pond becomes a home for fish, frogs, birds and plants. A fallen tree becomes a nurse log, feeding the next generation of seedlings as it returns to the soil.
A host offers first. A flowering plant sets out nectar. A berry bush ripens fruit. These provisions come in their own season, not whenever a visitor happens to want them.
A host also makes its presence known. Birdsong, scent and the marks left along a trail tell newcomers that a place is already inhabited. The visitor does not arrive in an empty world.
The guest has responsibilities too. A guest attends to the season and to what the place can offer. A guest does not assume that everything within reach is theirs to take. A guest leaves something that helps sustain the relationship.
A bee takes nectar and carries pollen. Read through this teaching, that exchange offers an image of visiting well: receiving a gift while helping the host continue its life.
Many Indigenous harvesting protocols carry the same ethic into daily practice: ask before taking, take only what is needed, offer thanks, and leave enough for others and for the plant or animal to recover.
None of this suggests that every relationship in nature is peaceful or generous. These are ways of seeing responsibilities that people can learn to carry.
Everyone is both
No being is only a host or only a guest.
A tree makes room for other life while depending on soil, water, sunlight, fungi, and relationships beyond itself. People, too, may welcome others into their homes while remaining dependent on the larger homeland that sustains them.
The distinction between host and guest is therefore about roles, not ranks. Everyone receives. Everyone has something to give.
The question is whether the exchange sustains the place.
A visitor who takes without restraint leaves less for those who come next. A host who neglects the place has less to offer. Both have responsibilities, and neither can fulfil them alone.
This is the heart of reciprocity, a principle found across Indigenous philosophies: relationships stay healthy when gifts move in both directions. The Haudenosaunee teaching of the seventh generation extends that exchange across time, asking that decisions made today leave the place well for those not yet born.
Mutual benefit begins here, with the recognition that different beings carry different gifts and obligations.
What people carry forward
My grandmother’s teaching connects these relationships to the ways people meet their neighbours.
The host prepares a place, offers food and rest, and explains where the visitor has arrived. The guest makes themselves known, explains why they have come, listens to the terms of the visit, and brings something in return. The gift may be material. It may also be labour, knowledge, news, or a commitment to help.
Nations around the Great Lakes carried this ethic into treaty. The Dish with One Spoon, an agreement among the Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabe and allied Nations, describes shared hunting grounds as a single dish. Everyone eats from it with one spoon, takes only what they need, leaves enough for others, and keeps the dish clean. The Two Row Wampum, between the Haudenosaunee and European newcomers, shows two vessels travelling side by side on the same river, each keeping its own ways and neither steering the other.
In this understanding, acknowledgement is more than naming the people associated with a territory. It is learning enough about a homeland to behave responsibly within it.
Whose home is this? What sustains it? What laws and agreements guide our presence? What can we receive, and what must we return?
These questions make acknowledgement a relationship rather than a recital.
They also make it diplomatic. A guest who recognizes the host’s homeland recognizes that they have entered a place with its own relationships and responsibilities. A host who welcomes the guest makes room for an encounter governed by those relationships.
Neither arrives without standing. Neither arrives without obligations.
Beginning with place
I write from the shores of the Bay of Quinte. Here, the teaching asks me to begin with the water, the shoreline, and the life they sustain. Before I describe myself, I must attend to where I am.
That does not make people or history less important. It places them within the homeland that gives them meaning. The people, their laws, their agreements, and their responsibilities all belong to the place.
In a time of longer fire seasons, troubled waters, and uncertainty about what the next season will bring, this teaching asks something difficult and useful of us: pay attention before you speak.
An acknowledgement cannot tell the story of a place if the speaker has stopped noticing it.
The land came first. Beginning there again means learning to name what sustains us, and accepting that what sustains us also asks something of us.
By Rye Karonhiowanen Barberstock
Photo by Andrik Langfield on Unsplash
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