Securing Minerals for the Energy Transition: Finance for Southern Africa

The report analyzes the critical minerals sector in 10 Southern African countries, highlighting a significant financing gap where the region holds 30% of global reserves but attracts less than 10% of exploration spending. It identifies eight key challenges—policy uncertainty, investment risks, energy access, transportation barriers, innovation lag, slow industrialization, skill gaps, and demand volatility—and provides case studies such as Zambia's policy reforms, the Lobito Corridor, and Namibia's green iron plant to illustrate potential solutions for scaling sustainable mineral value chains.

• The Southern African Region (SAR) possesses approximately 30% of the world's proven critical mineral reserves, including 50% of global cobalt, 20% of graphite, and 10% of copper reserves, yet it attracts less than 10% of global mining exploration spending.
• SAR countries generally exhibit higher reserves-to-production ratios than their global peers for most critical minerals, except for lithium, indicating a higher potential for future extraction.
• Financing for the region's critical minerals is hindered by eight primary themes: policy uncertainty, investment risks, energy access, transportation barriers, innovation lag, pace of industrialization, skill gaps, and demand volatility.
• Zambia has implemented policy reforms, including the National Mineral Resources Development Policy 2022 and the Minerals Regulation Commission Act 2024, to stabilize taxation and streamline licensing, with a goal to increase copper output to 3 million tonnes by 2031.
• Local financial institutions can de-risk high-stakes projects; for example, Rawbank led a $400 million syndicated loan for the Kamoa-Kakula copper project in the DRC, integrating international ESG standards and requiring 60% of revenues to be repatriated to the DRC.
• Namibia's Oshivela plant, launched in April 2025, represents Africa's first industrial-scale green iron facility, utilizing a 25 MW solar PV system and 13.4 MW battery storage to enable zero-emissions production.
• The Lobito Atlantic Railway, supported by a $200 million funding arrangement from the DBSA and US DFC, connects the Atlantic coast of Angola to the DRC, reducing transportation costs and improving market access for landlocked copper belt mines.
• Industrial clustering, such as the Richards Bay IDZ in South Africa, promotes local beneficiation by co-locating downstream manufacturing with shared infrastructure and tax incentives, attracting investments like the $4.5 billion Nyanza Light Metals plant.
• The Mandela Mining Precinct in South Africa addresses skill gaps and ageing infrastructure through public-private partnerships, focusing on R&D to increase mine safety and productivity while reducing reliance on imported equipment.
• Offtake agreements can provide necessary demand certainty for pre-production projects, as seen in the agreement between POSCO and Black Rock Mining for graphite in Tanzania, which included a $40 million equity investment and a 12-year binding offtake agreement.

APA

World Economic Forum (2025). Securing Minerals for the Energy Transition: Finance for Southern Africa. https://reports.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Securing_Minerals_for_the_Energy_Transition_2025.pdf

Chicago

World Economic Forum. Securing Minerals for the Energy Transition: Finance for Southern Africa. 2025. https://reports.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Securing_Minerals_for_the_Energy_Transition_2025.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Economic Forum |title=Securing Minerals for the Energy Transition: Finance for Southern Africa |date=August 2025 |url=https://reports.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Securing_Minerals_for_the_Energy_Transition_2025.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldeconomicforum2025securing, author = {{World Economic Forum}}, title = {{Securing Minerals for the Energy Transition: Finance for Southern Africa}}, institution = {World Economic Forum}, year = {2025}, month = aug, url = {https://reports.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Securing_Minerals_for_the_Energy_Transition_2025.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }