President Bola Tinubu has urged African countries to work together to end the export of raw minerals and ensure the continent captures more economic value from its vast mineral wealth.
Tinubu made the call in New York during the AMSG High-Level Roundtable on Critical Minerals Development in Africa, held on the sidelines of the 81st Session of the United Nations General Assembly.
Represented by Vice President Kashim Shettima, the President said Africa must move beyond supplying raw materials and develop local processing, manufacturing and technology-driven value chains around its mineral resources.
The roundtable, convened by Tinubu and AMSG Chairman and Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Dele Alake, was themed, “From Resources to Wealth: Continental Cooperation for Mineral Value Addition, Data Sovereignty, Innovative Financing and Critical Minerals Security.”
Tinubu said Africa could not continue to possess vast mineral resources while mineral-rich communities remained without adequate infrastructure, jobs and economic opportunities.
“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.
He noted that growing global demand for minerals such as cobalt, copper, lithium and rare earth elements, driven by clean energy, artificial intelligence and advanced manufacturing, presented an opportunity for Africa to retain more value from its resources.
According to Tinubu, the continent should expand into mineral processing and refining, battery production, component manufacturing, technology development and skills acquisition.
“The worth of a mine must be counted in the lives it improves,” he said, adding that jobs, industries, infrastructure, technology transfer, African enterprise participation and long-term prosperity should form part of how the sector’s success is measured.
Tinubu warned that African countries could undermine their collective bargaining power by competing with one another through lower royalties, weaker local-content requirements and excessive concessions.
“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.
He said Nigeria was implementing reforms aimed at increasing local value addition, improving geological data and investor access, organising artisanal miners into cooperatives, combating illegal mining and strengthening regulatory accountability.
Tinubu said revenue from Nigeria’s mining sector rose from about N6 billion in 2023 to more than N38 billion in 2024 and between N68.1 billion and N70 billion in 2025.
He also cited foreign investment commitments and the development of large-scale lithium processing capacity in Nasarawa State as signs of growing opportunities in the sector.
The President said Nigeria’s mining policy was designed to ensure that minerals extracted in the country increasingly support local industries, workers, skills development and host communities.
He urged African countries to build partnerships based on mutual benefit, sovereign equality, fair market access, industrial investment and technology transfer, while calling for a common continental position on critical minerals.
Tinubu said the Continental Integration and Economic Assurance Declaration adopted at the roundtable should translate into a binding implementation programme with clear timelines, financing arrangements and accountability mechanisms.
Alake described the declaration as a framework for building a unified architecture for Africa’s critical and solid minerals value chains and urged countries that had yet to join AMSG to become members.
He said Africa’s mineral ambitions would require more than policy, stressing the importance of financing, infrastructure and industrial partnerships.
Kenya’s Minister of Blue Economy and Maritime Affairs, Hassan Ali Joho, called for greater domestic resource mobilisation to support solid minerals development and urged AMSG members to promote transparency, competitiveness and greater alignment of licensing procedures while respecting national sovereignty.
Representatives from Liberia, Chad, Tanzania and other stakeholders also contributed to the discussions.
The State House said AMSG brings together African ministers responsible for mining and solid minerals to promote greater cooperation and value addition across the continent’s mineral sector.
