Inside Africa’s high stakes push for mineral sovereignty

Across Africa, governments are rolling out bans, quotas, and tariffs on the export of unprocessed minerals — part of a push to keep more of the value from the continent’s reserves of lithium, chrome, cobalt, and copper at home. Over the past two years — and especially since 2023 — a growing number of countries have imposed outright bans or restrictions on the export of unprocessed minerals. In 2025 alone, Zimbabwe restricted the export of raw lithium and said it would consider limits on chrome exports; Botswana required that mining firms sell 24% of new concessions to local investors; Ghana banned mining in all forest reserves by revoking a 2022 regulation; Malawi put a temporary ban on all raw mineral exports; and the Democratic Republic of Congo placed bans on cobalt exports. The measures vary in design and ambition, but they share a common logic: Exporting raw materials has left African economies exposed to changes in commodity prices while foreign investors reap the benefit. By keeping minerals local or controlling exports, governments hope to create jobs, attract investment, and build better foundations for industrial economies. Proponents argue the measures are necessary to force investment in domestic processing, create jobs, and rebalance trade relationships long dominated by raw commodity exports. But some analysts warn that for African countries to benefit from their own materials, they need domestic regulation and, more importantly, regional coordination. Otherwise, a ban in one country will just cause exports to move to another. “Minerals cross borders,” Kudakwashe Manjonjo, just transition adviser at Power Shift Africa, told Devex. “And our borders are artificial. Zimbabwe and South Africa together control 80% of the chromium globally, but they have very different ideas about what the plans and regulations look like. What then happens is, you create arbitrage opportunities, and that feeds into corruption.” Countries in southern Africa have discussed a minerals cartel — an “OPEC for minerals” — but progress is slow. According to Thomas Scurfield, senior economic analyst for Africa at the Natural Resource Governance Institute, these bans are a start, and one of the few policy levers available to African governments. “For countries with limited fiscal space and weak bargaining power, these bans are a way to force a conversation with mining companies,” Scurfield said. “But they only work if they’re part of a broader strategy.” Barriers to entry Mineral processing is highly energy-intensive, and few countries can match China’s ability to supply power cheaply and at scale. Even South Africa, the continent’s most industrialized economy, struggles to process minerals competitively. “Without cheap, reliable energy, these bans risk stalling production rather than creating new industry,” said W. Gyude Moore, a senior policy fellow at the Energy for Growth Hub and former Liberian minister of public works. Building the necessary power infrastructure could take 18 to 24 months under ideal conditions, he estimated — and significantly longer in countries facing political instability, debt distress, or weak utilities. Scurfield added that energy constraints intersect with climate politics. “There’s a tension between the need for rapid industrialization and the pressure to decarbonize,” he said. “Processing minerals for the energy transition still requires a lot of energy upfront.” In the DRC, those constraints are already shaping how far export controls can realistically go. For now, the vast majority of cobalt leaves DRC in an unprocessed or semiprocessed state to be refined elsewhere, primarily in China. In 2021, China was responsible for producing 70% of the world’s refined cobalt. Without the technology and resources to do the refining itself, the DRC put a 10-month ban on cobalt exports in February 2025. But to push beyond that intermediate stage — into battery manufacturing or other downstream industries — requires organized governance. “There is a big issue of power in Congo,” Armel Ngazi, a technical adviser on critical minerals at DRC-based IMPACT, a humanitarian aid organization, told Devex. He added that transport infrastructure and governance gaps continue to slow progress. “Discussions are still ongoing, but I think it will take a bit of time before we reach the level of having such infrastructure.” Teamwork makes the dream work The effectiveness of export bans varies depending on a country’s position in global supply chains. For countries that have a monopoly on a mineral, regional coordination is less crucial. For example, the DRC is by far the largest producer of cobalt, accounting for more than 75% of the world’s supply. The ban on exports, despite being temporary, had an immediate effect of raising the price of the mineral and giving the government better visibility over export volumes, Ngazi said. After consultations with civil society and the private sector, authorities lifted the ban and introduced export quotas instead — a compromise aimed at maintaining government control without fully shutting down production. “The DRC can plausibly impose restrictions on cobalt because of the dominant role it plays in global supply,” Moore said. “But if a country producing a fungible commodity like iron ore tries the same approach, buyers can simply go elsewhere.” The idea of an OPEC-style minerals cartel has surfaced repeatedly in policy discussions. But even proponents admit the idea is far easier to invoke than to implement. “People talk about it, but I don’t think they fully appreciate how hard it would be,” Manjonjo said. “But you don’t need the whole African Union,” he added, advocating for mineral-specific alliances: Steel could be South Africa and Zimbabwe. Cobalt and copper could be the DRC, Zambia, and Tanzania. Nickel could be Tanzania, Malawi, and Zimbabwe.” Such groupings could set minimum investment requirements, align export rules, and jointly negotiate with foreign investors — reducing the zero-sum competition that currently dominates. Southern Africa already has an institutional framework that could address these challenges: the Southern African Development Community, or SADC. The bloc has long-standing trade and industrialization protocols designed to harmonize policy across its 16 member states. In theory, those mechanisms could support a coordinated approach to mineral export rules and value addition. In practice, they remain largely dormant. “SADC is functional enough to do this,” Manjonjo said. “The problem is political will.” The SADC trade protocol still requires ratification by two more countries to trigger stronger regional governance structures, which means most governments prefer bilateral deals or national regulations. Taken together, the export bans across Africa reflect a renewed belief that industrialization — not raw exports — is the path to jobs, resilience, and economic sovereignty. “These policies are a signal,” Scurfield said. “The question is whether governments can follow through with the energy investments, regulatory reforms, and coordination needed to make value addition viable.” For some countries, export restrictions may quietly fade through exemptions and waivers. For others, they could mark the first step in a longer, riskier experiment in industrial policy. “Bans are the easy part. Building the ecosystem is the hard part,” Moore said.