Trading Africa's Green Minerals at a Crossroads: A Call for Regional Coordination

This research paper argues that African nations must transition from fragmented national negotiations to a coordinated regional approach to trade diplomacy regarding green critical minerals. By leveraging the Africa Green Minerals Strategy (AGMS), the authors suggest that the continent can move beyond raw material extraction toward green industrialization and value addition, utilizing a collective negotiating framework to increase leverage against competing global powers.

• Africa possesses over 30% of the world's known reserves of critical minerals—including copper, cobalt, nickel, lithium, rare earth elements, and platinum group metals—which are essential for decarbonization technologies like electric vehicles (EVs) and green hydrogen. The International Energy Agency expects EV battery production to drive approximately half of the demand growth for these minerals over the next twenty years.
• Major global economies are employing diverse diplomatic and economic strategies to secure African mineral supplies. The United States has signed a joint MoU with Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) for battery-grade material value chains; the European Union has signed separate MoUs with the DRC and Zambia and is discussing Clean Trade and Investment Partnerships with South Africa; China continues to use off-take agreements and infrastructure-for-resources deals in Zimbabwe and the DRC; and Arab Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia, are increasing engagement.
• The Africa Green Minerals Strategy (AGMS), adopted in February 2025, provides a blueprint for sustainable development and value addition, building on the 2009 Africa Mining Vision. However, its implementation is in the early stages, and the lack of a consolidated platform for collective engagement has led to fragmented negotiations that may weaken Africa's position on mineral pricing, technology transfer, and beneficiation.
• To maximize benefits, the authors propose a regionally coordinated strategy for external engagement based on principles of transparency, technology transfer, and value retention. They suggest creating a continental coordination task force involving the African Union Commission, the AfCFTA Secretariat, and UNECA, as well as a pan-African critical minerals negotiations advisory group. This collective approach is compared to OPEC's model of oil governance to avoid underpricing and enhance negotiation power.

APA

Kitaw, M. Y., & Ismail, Y. (2025). Trading Africa's Green Minerals at a Crossroads: A Call for Regional Coordination. Forum on Trade, Environment, & the SDGs. https://tessforum.org/latest/trading-africas-green-minerals-at-a-crossroads-a-call-for-regional-coordination

Chicago

Kitaw, Marit Y., and Yasmin Ismail. Trading Africa's Green Minerals at a Crossroads: A Call for Regional Coordination. Forum on Trade, Environment, & the SDGs, 2025. https://tessforum.org/latest/trading-africas-green-minerals-at-a-crossroads-a-call-for-regional-coordination.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Kitaw |first1=Marit Y. |last2=Ismail |first2=Yasmin |title=Trading Africa's Green Minerals at a Crossroads: A Call for Regional Coordination |publisher=Forum on Trade, Environment, & the SDGs |date=30 October 2025 |url=https://tessforum.org/latest/trading-africas-green-minerals-at-a-crossroads-a-call-for-regional-coordination |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{kitaw2025trading, author = {Kitaw, Marit Y. and Ismail, Yasmin}, title = {{Trading Africa's Green Minerals at a Crossroads: A Call for Regional Coordination}}, institution = {Forum on Trade, Environment, \& the SDGs}, year = {2025}, month = oct, url = {https://tessforum.org/latest/trading-africas-green-minerals-at-a-crossroads-a-call-for-regional-coordination}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }