Resource-rich African nations risk missing out on the investment needed to extract and refine their mineral wealth into high-value products for the clean energy transition because they lack accurate information on what they have, experts are warning.

African countries have attracted huge interest as the world scrambles to access the minerals and metals needed for the energy transition and digital and military technologies, with investors from the US, China, the United Arab Emirates and Europe jostling to secure access to the continent’s resources. 

But any knowledge of Africa’s mineral wealth is, at best, an estimate based on century-old-mapping and haphazard geological data, policy experts and investors told Climate Home News. 

The United Nations says Africa is home to 30% of the world’s mineral reserves, including cobalt, copper, lithium and manganese, which are needed to manufacture batteries and other clean energy technologies.

But experts like Bright Simons, who tracks natural resource spending in Africa for the Ghana-based IMANI Centre for Policy and Education, said the 30% number is not backed by any “empirical, evidence-based assessment” of the continent’s mineral wealth. While some analysts like Simons think the figure could be an overestimate, others argue it is likely an underestimate of the continent’s mineral reserves.

Up-to-date and accurate data is critical for governments to negotiate better deals with prospecting mining companies and to help drive investment in mineral extraction and processing facilities that can add value to the continent’s resources.

But the lack of good mapping has negatively impacted the continent’s efforts to capture the economic benefits of booming mineral demand and to create jobs by extracting and processing raw materials into higher-value products before export, experts said.

Colonial maps

Under-exploration and scant information about Africa’s resources have made it challenging for states to attract investment and develop their resources, said Pritish Behuria, a political economist at the Global Development Institute at the UK’s University of Manchester.

“In many cases, former colonial powers retain more current knowledge of the kinds of mineral deposits that exist in African countries – and often, this has proven difficult to access for African governments,” he told Climate Home News.

Thabit Jacob, a researcher of extractive and energy resources at Roskilde University in Denmark, said many African countries “still rely on colonial maps”. 

“There’s a growing realisation that Africa must know its true value in mineral richness and investment in geological mapping is crucial,” he added.

Mapping inequality

However, mapping investment is falling short. Africa’s share of global exploration investment has fallen in the last two decades, data shows.

In 2024 alone, both Canada and Australia received significantly more investment in geological mapping than the whole of Africa, even though the continent’s landmass is three times the size of the two countries combined, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. 

Even in South Africa, a major mining destination, only 12% of the country has been mapped at a detailed level “which compares poorly with other popular mining destinations such as Canada and Australia where there is near complete coverage at similar scales”, explained Tania Marshall, of the Geological Society of South Africa.

Nigeria’s push to cash in on lithium rush gets off to a rocky start

To address the dearth in data, multinational institutions like the World Bank have provided African countries with finance for mapping, but have simultaneously encouraged them to liberalise and privatise their mining industries.

As a result, international investors prioritising project development have come to dominate the continent’s mining sector, crowding out state-sponsored initiatives with stronger incentives to invest in data-gathering, researchers have found.

Digging blind

Orina Chang, an investor leading geological mapping across Somaliland, which has reserves of copper and zinc ore, said she was surprised to find out that even countries attracting huge interest from institutional miners, such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), do not have systematic up-to-date mapping.

Instead, mining firms rely on artisanal mining and surface signs, like exposed ores on the ground – and crossing their fingers, she told Climate Home News.

The mapping deficit means there is little certainty on the size and quality of mineral deposits and provides few incentives for miners to invest in processing plants, Chang explained. 

“Without mapping, everyone is blindly digging and you just get people who are not interested in really investing in your country,” she said. “With mapping, you’re able to attract much better players and build plants, create jobs, drive economic growth, help the GDP.”

The rise of AI-driven exploration tools

Today, AI-driven mapping tools have created new opportunities to obtain high-precision information with less on-the-ground investment. Geophysical data and satellite imagery are fed into a model that creates a geological map which can help point to high-potential deposits.

Last year, California-based KoBold Metals, which is backed by US billionaires Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, discovered a massive copper deposit in Zambia using AI-driven exploration. In July, the firm signed an agreement with the DRC to lead critical mineral exploration there. 

But the technology is expensive and not widely available to governments.

Instead, in its 2024 Green Minerals Strategy, the African Union called for some of the revenues from mineral rents to be reinvested into mapping using low-cost techniques such as satellite imagery and drones, which are less precise.

The case for co-operation

For Gerald Arhin, a research fellow at University College London, greater regional collaboration and pooling resources could also help reduce the costs of mapping for individual governments. Last year, for example, South Africa signed an agreement with South Sudan to co-operate on mineral exploration.

“The sharing of data, industrial intelligence and technical expertise across borders could be transformative for African countries, as well as for developing countries in other regions,” Clovis Freire, who heads the Extractive Commodities Section at UN Trade and Development (Unctad), told Climate Home News.

Mapping, however, is only one element of a complicated equation when it comes to developing minerals for the energy transition, said Eszter Szedlacsek, who researches climate justice in the context of the green transition at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

“In the race for Africa’s critical minerals, deals hinge only partly on where resources are found, and more on geopolitics, investment conditions and longstanding trade ties,” she said.

The post Outdated geological data limits Africa’s push to benefit from its mineral wealth appeared first on Climate Home News.

Outdated geological data limits Africa’s push to benefit from its mineral wealth