President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has launched a fresh continental push to end Africa’s long-standing dependence on exporting raw minerals, calling for an aggressive alliance among African countries to take control of their mineral wealth and build industries around it.
Tinubu warned that Africa could no longer continue supplying the raw materials that power global industries while importing finished products at huge costs and leaving mineral-rich communities trapped in poverty.
The President spoke on Monday in New York, United States, at the high-level roundtable of the Africa Minerals Strategy Group (AMSG) on critical minerals development in Africa, held on the sidelines of the 81st United Nations General Assembly.
The meeting, convened and chaired by Tinubu alongside Vice-President Kashim Shettima and the AMSG Chairman and Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Dele Alake, focused on transforming Africa’s mineral resources into sustainable wealth through local processing, data sovereignty, innovative financing and critical-minerals security.
In an address delivered by Shettima, Tinubu declared: “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.”
‘Stop Exporting Raw Materials’
The President said Africa’s mineral wealth must translate into jobs, industries, infrastructure, technology transfer and prosperity for its people, rather than simply feeding industries outside the continent.
He lamented that communities sitting on vast mineral deposits often lack basic infrastructure, employment opportunities and meaningful stakes in the resources extracted from their territories.
According to him, the rapidly growing global demand for cobalt, copper, lithium and rare earth elements, driven by clean energy, artificial intelligence and advanced manufacturing, presents Africa with both an opportunity and a warning.
“The answer to such deprivation,” Tinubu said, “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 African countries against competing with one another by offering lower royalties, weak local-content requirements and excessive concessions to investors.
He argued that such fragmentation would leave individual countries with little bargaining power in the global minerals market.
“Fragmentation leaves us exporting raw materials and buying finished goods at a premium,” he said.
“Cooperation gives our markets scale, our industries integration, our financing reach and our negotiations authority.”
Tinubu Unveils Nigeria’s Mining Prescription
The President said Nigeria must insist on local value addition as part of new mining licences while strengthening geological data, investor access and regulation.
He also called for the formal organisation of artisanal miners into cooperatives and intensified action against illegal mining.
Tinubu highlighted what he described as early gains from his administration’s mining reforms, saying revenue from the sector increased from approximately ₦6 billion in 2023 to more than ₦38 billion in 2024 and between ₦68.1 billion and ₦70 billion in 2025.
He also pointed to major foreign-investment commitments and the development and commissioning of large-scale lithium-processing capacity in Nasarawa State as evidence of the sector’s potential.
The President said his administration’s policy direction was designed to ensure that minerals extracted in Nigeria contribute directly to Nigerian industries, workers, skills and host communities.
He declared that the experience demonstrated that “firm terms can attract serious capital.”
‘No Outsider Will Organise Africa’
Tinubu called for stronger continental cooperation, insisting that African countries must negotiate collectively when their interests converge.
Offering Nigeria’s experience to other African countries for possible adaptation, he called for partnerships based on mutual benefit, shared responsibility and sovereign equality.
He said Africa should demand fair market access, industrial investment and technology partnerships that build local capabilities rather than deepen dependency.
“Reliability must never mean dependency, and partnership must never demand inequality,” Tinubu said.
Declaring the roundtable open, the President delivered an emphatic call for African unity.
“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 declared.
“We must integrate our markets, mobilise African capital and negotiate with one voice wherever our interests converge.”
Tinubu maintained that Africa’s minerals could contribute to global prosperity, the energy transition and secure supply chains, but warned that mineral deposits alone could not guarantee development.
“Minerals confer no automatic prosperity; vision, investment and industry must earn it. Political will must turn mineral promise into enduring African wealth,” he said.
Africa Moves Towards Unified Minerals Framework
Earlier, AMSG Chairman and Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Dele Alake, said the group was proposing a Continental Integration and Economic Assurance Declaration (CIEAD) as a framework for creating a unified architecture for Africa’s critical and solid-minerals value chains.
Alake urged African countries yet to join the AMSG to become part of the initiative, stressing that the continent needed greater coordination of its resources, ideas and efforts.
He argued that Africa’s mineral ambitions could not be achieved through policy implementation alone, but required integrated partnerships spanning financing, infrastructure and industrial development.
Kenya’s Minister of Blue Economy and Maritime Affairs, Hassan Ali Joho, also stressed the importance of domestic resource mobilisation as a catalyst for minerals development.
Joho called for greater transparency and competitiveness among AMSG members, as well as closer alignment of licensing procedures, while respecting the sovereignty of individual countries.
Representatives from Liberia, Chad and Tanzania, among other stakeholders, also contributed to the discussions.
The Continental Integration and Economic Assurance Declaration adopted at the roundtable is expected to establish a more predictable and investment-ready environment for Africa’s strategic mineral corridors, harmonised policies, responsible investment and shared infrastructure.
Tinubu, however, warned that the declaration must go beyond another ceremonial agreement, demanding clear timelines, financing arrangements, 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 dedicated financing platforms for the continent’s mineral transformation agenda.
