President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has called for an aggressive alliance among African countries to end the export of raw minerals and ensure the continent benefits more from its vast mineral wealth. Tinubu said African nations must move beyond supplying raw materials to the global market and prioritise local processing, manufacturing……
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has called for an aggressive alliance among African countries to end the export of raw minerals and ensure the continent benefits more from its vast mineral wealth.
Tinubu said African nations must move beyond supplying raw materials to the global market and prioritise local processing, manufacturing and value addition to create jobs, industries and sustainable wealth.
The President made the call on Monday in New York, United States, during the 3rd Africa Minerals Strategy Group, AMSG, High-Level Roundtable on Critical Minerals Development in Africa, held on the sidelines of the ongoing 81st Session of the United Nations General Assembly (81st UNGA).
Tinubu’s address was delivered by Vice President Kashim Shettima at the high-level meeting, which was convened and chaired by the President alongside Shettima and the Chairman of the AMSG and Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Dele Alake.
This was disclosed in a statement by Shettima’s media aide, Stanley Nkwocha, on Tuesday, August 22.
The roundtable was themed, “From Resources to Wealth: Continental Cooperation for Mineral Value Addition, Data Sovereignty, Innovative Financing and Critical Minerals Security.”
In his address, Tinubu said Africa could not continue to export its mineral wealth while its people remained impoverished.
“For generations, Africa has furnished the materials of prosperity elsewhere. Our duty is to ensure that the future being fashioned from African minerals has room for African ambition,” he said.
The President said mineral-rich communities across the continent continued to lack infrastructure, jobs and meaningful stakes in the resources extracted from their environment, despite growing global demand for critical minerals used in clean energy, artificial intelligence and advanced manufacturing.
He said Africa’s response must go beyond extraction.
The answer, according to Tinubu, “must be processing, refining, batteries, components, African technologies and competitive skills.”
He added that “the worth of a mine must be counted in the lives it improves.”
“Jobs, industries, infrastructure, technology transfer, African enterprise participation and prosperity retained across generations must measure our progress from resources to wealth,” the President said.
Tinubu warned that African countries could not achieve the desired transformation by acting independently, arguing that competition based on lower royalties, weaker local-content requirements and excessive concessions could weaken the continent’s bargaining power.
“Fragmentation leaves us exporting raw materials and buying finished goods at a premium. Cooperation gives our markets scale, our industries integration, our financing reach and our negotiations authority,” he said.
The President said Nigeria must require local value addition as part of new mining licences, strengthen geological data and investor access, organise artisanal miners into cooperatives, tackle illegal mining and improve regulatory accountability.
He also highlighted what he described as gains recorded under his administration’s mining policy direction.
“Revenue rose from approximately ₦6 billion in 2023 to over ₦38 billion in 2024 and between ₦68.1 billion and ₦70 billion in 2025. Major foreign investment commitments and large-scale lithium processing capacity developed and commissioned in Nasarawa State demonstrate the possibilities,” Tinubu said.
He said the administration’s policy direction was designed to ensure that minerals extracted in Nigeria support Nigerian industries, workers, skills and host communities.
According to him, ongoing reforms have demonstrated that “firm terms can attract serious capital.”
Tinubu urged other African countries to draw from Nigeria’s experience while developing approaches suited to their individual circumstances.
He called for “reliable partnerships grounded in mutual benefit, shared responsibility, sovereign equality and respect for our priorities, with fair market access, industrial investment and technology partnerships that build African capabilities.”
The President also urged AMSG members to speak with one voice in advancing Africa’s collective interests.
He said reliability must not translate into dependency, while partnerships must not come at the expense of equality.
On the Continental Integration and Economic Assurance Declaration, CIEAD, adopted and signed at the meeting, Tinubu said the framework must create a predictable and investment-ready environment for Africa’s Strategic Mineral Corridors.
He called for harmonised policies, responsible investment and shared infrastructure across the continent.
The President said the declaration must go beyond the signing ceremony and be backed by a binding programme with clear timelines, financing, implementation mechanisms and public accountability.
He also urged African countries to define their national and regional contributions, while calling on development finance institutions and sovereign investors to develop financing platforms for the sector.
Declaring the roundtable open, Tinubu said Africa must take greater responsibility for organising its mineral economy.
“Africa’s power resides in its people, markets and ingenuity. No outsider will organise our continent or place our industrial interests above their own,” he said.
“We must integrate our markets, mobilise African capital and negotiate with one voice wherever our interests converge.”
The President added, “Our industrial growth can strengthen global prosperity, the energy transition and secure supply chains. Minerals confer no automatic prosperity; vision, investment and industry must earn it. Political will must turn mineral promise into enduring African wealth.”
Earlier, AMSG Chairman and Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Dele Alake, said the group was proposing the Continental Integration and Economic Assurance Declaration as a framework for establishing a unified architecture for Africa’s critical and solid minerals value chains.
Alake said the growth of the AMSG reflected progress in Africa’s solid minerals sector and urged countries that had yet to join the group to do so.
He said greater cooperation was necessary to align efforts, ideas and resources in developing Africa’s natural resources.
According to him, Africa’s mineral ambitions could not be achieved through policy implementation alone, but required integrated partnerships covering financing and infrastructure development.
Kenya’s Minister of Blue Economy and Maritime Affairs, Hassan Ali Joho, also stressed the importance of domestic resource mobilisation in driving solid mineral development.
Joho said AMSG members needed to remain transparent and competitive while working towards greater alignment of licensing procedures, with due respect for the sovereignty of member states.
Representatives of Liberia, Chad and Tanzania, alongside other stakeholders, also contributed to discussions at the roundtable.
