Africa holds an estimated $29.5 trillion in mine-site mineral value—around 20 per cent of global mineral wealth—yet continues to capture only a small share of the economic returns embedded in this vast endowment. This is the central finding of a new report by the Africa Finance Corporation (AFC), which argues that the continent’s mineral sector has been narrowly defined and structurally underutilised.
The report, Compendium of Africa’s Strategic Minerals, was launched at the Mining Indaba in Cape Town and presents a reframing of Africa’s mineral wealth through a development-focused lens. Rather than viewing minerals solely as extractive assets for export, the study places industrialisation, infrastructure development, and long-term regional demand at the core of mineral strategy.
According to the AFC, as much as $8.6 trillion of Africa’s mineral wealth remains undeveloped. This gap is largely attributed to fragmented and uneven geological data, limited transparency, and weak data coverage across jurisdictions—factors that inflate risk perception and constrain exploration and investment. Improving the availability and quality of geological information, the report notes, is a critical first step in de-risking projects and unlocking new exploration capital.
Beyond data limitations, the study argues that conventional mine-site valuations significantly understate Africa’s true mineral potential. These valuations typically exclude the value created when raw materials are transformed into higher-value products such as steel, aluminium, fertilisers, batteries, and specialised alloys. When minerals are assessed at the point of industrial use rather than extraction, Africa’s endowment expands by an order of magnitude, revealing substantial latent economic value.
Speaking at the launch, AFC President and Chief Executive Officer, Samaila Zubairu, said the Compendium is intended to convert resource endowment into practical execution pathways. He explained that the report maps entire value chains, linking mineral reserves and production to processing capacity, power supply, transport infrastructure, and regional industrial corridors. This integrated approach, he said, is designed to improve transparency, lower the cost of capital, and guide more strategic investment into mining and the enabling infrastructure required for beneficiation and regional value chains.
A key finding of the Compendium is that mineral production, enabling infrastructure, and demand rarely co-locate or align at scale across the continent. As a result, African mineral supply chains are often tied to external demand cycles rather than domestic development needs. The steel value chain illustrates this disconnect. While Africa hosts world-class deposits of ferroalloys such as manganese, chromium, and nickel—and iron ore supply is entering a new growth cycle—these resources remain commercially tethered to Asian steel markets.
This exposure has proven costly. The slowdown in Asian steel demand, driven in part by China’s property downturn and weaker construction activity, has transmitted shocks directly into African mineral markets. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, cobalt production quotas have been imposed to manage oversupply and collapsing prices. In South Africa, primary steelmaking capacity has been shut down amid weak domestic demand, high operating costs, and fragmented off-take arrangements. In Gabon, major manganese operations have periodically suspended production in response to softer alloy demand from Asia. These disruptions are occurring even as Africa continues to expand transport networks, power systems, housing, and industrial capacity that require the same materials. The report concludes that the challenge is not a lack of demand, but a failure to anchor mineral production and processing to Africa’s own long-term material needs.
Infrastructure, the AFC argues, must sit at the centre of any effective mineral strategy—not as a passive enabler, but as the connective system that links raw materials, processing capacity, and end markets. Power cost and reliability, transport connectivity, and access to industrial land ultimately determine whether beneficiation is commercially viable. To illustrate this, the report maps mineral deposits and producing assets alongside railways, ports, power generation hubs, and transmission networks, identifying where regional value chains can realistically be developed.
The Compendium calls for targeted interventions in shared rail corridors and cross-border power transmission, particularly in mineral-rich regions where coordinated infrastructure could unlock scale, reduce delivered costs, and support regional industrial platforms. Such coordination is also central to Africa’s competitiveness in an era of green industrialisation. Clean power, efficient logistics, and integrated corridors—such as the Lobito Corridor—can reduce carbon intensity and improve access to markets where low-carbon and traceable supply chains are increasingly demanded.
The report also highlights emerging momentum across the continent. Angola is developing one of the world’s largest and highest-grade rare earth magnet metal deposits. Mozambique has become a key feedstock anchor for graphite and anode materials. Battery-grade manganese sulphate projects are advancing in Southern Africa, while uranium production has resumed in Namibia and Malawi during 2024–25.
Taken together, the AFC’s findings suggest that Africa’s mineral challenge is less about scarcity and more about strategy. By aligning data, infrastructure, processing capacity, and regional demand, the continent could move beyond extraction and begin capturing a far greater share of the value embedded in its mineral wealth.