For decades, Zambia extracted copper to sell it raw, leaving others to reap the added value of refining. Since 2023, at least 13 to 14 African countries have restricted exports of raw or semi-processed minerals, including the DRC, Zimbabwe, Namibia, and Ghana among the most engaged actors in this approach. The gamble is clear: force buyers to process the material where it is extracted, or go without it entirely.

The context makes this gamble urgent. The global energy transition depends on critical minerals—copper, cobalt, lithium, manganese—of which Africa holds a considerable share of world reserves. Yet the value chain stops at the pit’s edge. According to the International Energy Agency, China concentrates on average approximately 70% of global refining capacity for critical minerals—a share exceeding 90% for certain specific minerals like rare earths and graphite, but representing the general average across 19 minerals analyzed. Africa extracts, ships, and watches elsewhere capture the wealth.

The Essential Points

  • At least 13 to 14 African countries have restricted raw mineral exports since 2023, hoping to attract investment in local refining
  • Africa holds between 30% and 70% of world reserves of several critical minerals (cobalt, manganese, platinum), but concentrates less than 5% of global transformation capacity
  • Investments in local refining in Africa remain far too inadequate relative to the estimated needs to build a competitive sector
  • The main risk: buyers bypass countries imposing bans and source elsewhere, turning the tool against its objective
  • The African Mining Vision carried by the African Union proposes a regional framework to give this strategy the critical mass it currently lacks

The analogy with oil imposes itself and deserves to be transcended. OPEC showed that control of a resource could transform an economic balance of power. But oil remains oil once extracted. Critical minerals, meanwhile, only truly have value once transformed. The battle is not won at the mine—it is won at the refining plant. That is where the political decision to block raw exports finds all its complexity.

Thirteen Bans, One Common Logic

The countries that have taken the leap form an instructive geography. Namibia banned raw lithium exports in 2023. Zimbabwe followed on lithium and chromites. Zambia extended restrictions to untreated copper. The Democratic Republic of Congo, the world’s largest cobalt producer with approximately 70% of planetary reserves according to the IEA, has tightened export conditions. Ghana, Tanzania, Mozambique, and several West African countries have adopted similar measures on their own resources.

The logic is everywhere the same: by making access to raw material conditional on local investment in transformation, these governments hope to shift toward their territory the most lucrative part of the chain. One kilogram of raw lithium is worth a fraction of the price of one kilogram of lithium carbonate ready for batteries. Cobalt transformed into cathode precursors is worth several times its raw value. Refined copper represents a substantial premium over concentrate. These value gaps have been known for a long time. What has changed is the political determination to capture them.

Indonesia showed the way in 2020 with its ban on raw nickel exports, preceded by a similar ban on bauxite. The calculation proved worthwhile: the country became a nickel refining player within a few years, attracting massive Chinese investment in local smelters. Indonesian stainless steel exports exploded. The example circulates in African capitals as proof that the strategy can work—with important nuances that deserve examination.

A Market Reluctant to Relocate

The reality of 2024 is more sobering. Investments in local refining in Africa remain far below real needs, representing several billion dollars at the continental scale, bearing no comparison to the capital required to build a competitive sector. Building a copper smelter to international standards costs between $500 million and $2 billion per unit. A lithium processing complex capable of reaching competitive volumes easily exceeds $1 billion. The amounts committed to date, across the entire continent and the entire chain, do not yet allow for closing this gap.

Why this hiatus between political decision and market response? The reasons overlap. First, regulatory uncertainty: industrial investors planning assets with 20-year lifespans need predictability. An export ban can be reversed, amended, or circumvented by exemption. When rules change, business plans collapse. Several potential investors in Zambia and Zimbabwe cited this uncertainty as the main brake on firm commitment, according to reports from the Africa Mining Vision.

Next, infrastructure. Refining copper requires stable and abundant electrical power. A cobalt smelter consumes significant volumes of industrial water and generates waste requiring precise environmental standards. Ports capable of absorbing volumes of transformed products heavier than raw concentrates. Railway networks connecting mines to plants. This entire infrastructure is still insufficient in most countries concerned, and its development takes a decade, not two years.

Third brake: competition from already-established zones. China invested for thirty years in refining capacities that today benefit from economies of scale, trained workforces, an integrated supply chain, and considerable public financial support. Building a competitive African alternative within the short timeframe imposed by energy transition demand is a first-order industrial challenge. Acemoglu and Johnson’s analysis on how technical progress is distributed according to power relationships applies here with precision: without deliberate intervention, the gains of the energy transition will concentrate where capacity already exists.

The Risk of Circumvention

The most serious criticism leveled at the strategy of export bans is also the simplest: it assumes the buyer has no choice. Yet in most cases, he does.

Cobalt illustrates the tension. The DRC produces approximately 70% of the world’s cobalt—a concentration such that bypassing the country seems difficult. But automakers and battery manufacturers have precisely begun modifying their chemical compositions to reduce cobalt dependency, developing LFP (lithium iron phosphate) cathodes that contain none. The strategic decision of a single major producer can accelerate a technological substitution that marginalizes the resource it claims to control access to.

For countries less in a monopoly position, the risk is even more direct. If Zimbabwe toughens conditions for lithium access, buyers turn to Australia, Argentina, or Chile. If Zambia blocks raw copper, the market rebalances via Chile or Peru. Africa represents approximately 17 to 21% of global copper production—a rapidly growing share, driven notably by the DRC and Zambia, but not yet conferring absolute negotiating power. The lesson from Mexican nearshoring is transposable here: geological advantage does not automatically transform into economic advantage without the institutions and investment conditions to support it.

There is nevertheless a threshold beyond which collective African pressure becomes difficult to ignore. If multiple major countries act simultaneously on complementary resources, the cost of circumvention rises. This is the logic of critical mass: a single country facing the market is vulnerable; a coordinated coalition across entire value chains holds real leverage.

The African Mining Vision as Coordination Framework

This is precisely where the African Mining Vision (AMV), adopted by the African Union in 2009 and regularly updated, comes in. The document is not a vague statement of intent. It prescribes a continental approach to managing extractive resources, with local value chain development rather than raw exports as its central axis.

On paper, the AMV provides exactly the framework that national bans struggle to produce alone. It establishes the principle of coordination between producing states, harmonization of mining codes to reduce the regulatory instability that investors fear, and channeling mining revenues toward developing the infrastructure necessary for transformation. It also identifies potential regional transformation zones—rather than asking each country to build its own smelter, some can serve several neighbors at once.

Implementation, however, is progressing slowly. The African Center for Mineral Development (AMDC) based in Addis Ababa technically coordinates the AMV, but its operational capacities remain limited. Coordination among AU member states on industrial questions as specific as mineral refining stumbles against political realities, divergent interests, and electoral cycles that shorten decision horizons far below what building an industrial sector requires.

More targeted initiatives are beginning to partially fill these gaps. Zambia and the DRC concluded a bilateral agreement to jointly develop a battery value chain, leveraging the two countries’ copper and cobalt resources. The project, supported by discussions with the European Union as part of its critical raw materials partnership, ultimately aims to produce cathode precursors exportable to European battery plants. This would be a substantial change in chain positioning.

Infrastructure as Non-Negotiable Condition

Namibia offers an example of the concrete conditions necessary for success. When it banned raw lithium exports, it already had a deep-water port in Walvis Bay capable of handling industrial volumes. The government simultaneously announced investments in the electrical grid of mining regions, and advanced discussions with a Sino-Namibian consortium for building a first spodumene processing unit. The project is not yet in production, but the conditions for attracting investment differ from those of countries where basic infrastructure is lacking.

Access to energy is the critical knot. Much of Africa’s mining regions suffer from insufficient or excessively costly power supply for heavy industry. Paradoxically, some of the resources Africa seeks to maximize the value of—copper for cables, lithium for batteries, cobalt for cells—are precisely those that enter into infrastructure enabling large-scale renewable energy deployment. Africa could, in theory, finance its electrification through revenues from the global energy transition, and use that electricity to transform minerals from that same transition. This virtuous loop is real on paper; it requires a sequence of coordinated investments that few countries can orchestrate alone.

What 2040 Changes in the Question

The 2040 horizon is not arbitrary in this debate. It is approximately the moment when global demand for critical minerals for the energy transition will reach volumes such that existing refining capacity will be under pressure. According to IEA projections in its critical minerals report, demand for lithium could multiply by 5 to 8 by 2040 depending on scenarios—by a factor of 5 in the baseline scenario to a factor of 8 in the carbon neutrality scenario—cobalt demand by two, copper demand by a significant factor beyond current capacities.

This calendar is decisive for Africa. If continental refining capacities are in place and operational before this demand peak, African producing countries will be indispensable suppliers of transformed material. If they are not, demand will be absorbed elsewhere—by expansions of Chinese capacities, by new smelters in Europe financed by Gulf state sovereign wealth funds, by U.S. investments backed by Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) legislation and its equivalents.

There is a temporal asymmetry in this situation. Building a refining sector takes ten to fifteen years from initial investment decisions to full operational capacity. If necessary investments are not committed by 2027-2028, plants will not be ready for the demand peak of the mid-2030s to 2040s. Africa would then export the resources of the twenty-first century under the same conditions as the oil of the twentieth century: raw, undervalued, and to the benefit of processors installed elsewhere.

The stakes are not merely accounting. Critical mineral value chains will generate skilled jobs, technology transfers, and substantially higher government revenues than raw extraction. These are the resources that will—or will not—finance the educational systems, healthcare infrastructure, and agricultural transitions of an Africa whose population will grow from 1.4 billion to over 2.5 billion inhabitants by 2050. The question of mineral refining is therefore also a generational question: what producing countries capture or let slip away in the next ten years will determine the public resources available for the two decades that follow.

The competition between markets and regulation that Europe wages on other fronts offers a useful mirror: countries that built solid institutional frameworks and genuine regional coordination transformed apparent disadvantages into durable positions. Africa has the resource. It has the conceptual framework with the AMV. The missing variable remains the speed and consistency of execution.

The question that opens is not whether the strategy of export bans is right or wrong in principle—it is right, insofar as the market had no spontaneous reason to shift refining capacities to Africa when they function elsewhere. The real question is whether African countries can construct, coordinate, and finance quickly enough the conditions for this strategy to succeed before missing the window that the energy transition opens at this precise moment.

Sources

  1. Agence Ecofin — Critical Minerals: Copper, Main Driver of Investment in Africa Since 2016: https://www.agenceecofin.com/actualites-industries/0106-138865-minerais-critiques-le-cuivre-principal-moteur-des-investissements-en-afrique-depuis-2016
  2. International Energy Agency (IEA) — Critical Minerals Market Review 2024: https://www.iea.org/reports/critical-minerals-market-review-2024
  3. African Union — Africa Mining Vision: Framework document available on the African Union website (au.int)
  4. African Center for Mineral Development (AMDC) — Annual reports and policy notes (uneca.org/amdc)
  5. IEA — The Role of Critical Minerals in Clean Energy Transitions (reference report, updated 2023)
  6. IEA – Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2025 (primary source on Chinese refining ~70%): https://www.iea.org/reports/global-critical-minerals-outlook-2025/executive-summary
  7. African Development Bank – Copper Factsheet (17% African copper production): https://www.afdb.org/sites/default/files/documents/publications/copper_factsheet_final_nov_21.pdf
  8. UNECA – Zambia-DRC Cooperation Agreement on Electric Batteries: https://www.uneca.org/stories/zambia-and-drc-sign-cooperation-agreement-to-manufacture-electric-batteries
  9. African Union – Official Africa Mining Vision Page: https://au.int/en/ti/amv/about
  10. IMF – Harnessing Sub-Saharan Africa’s Critical Mineral Wealth (DRC = 70% cobalt production): https://www.imf.org/en/news/articles/2024/04/29/cf-harnessing-sub-saharan-africas-critical-mineral-wealth
  11. Climate Change News – 13 African Countries Have Restricted Mineral Exports: https://www.climatechangenews.com/2026/03/11/africa-needs-more-than-export-bans-to-cash-in-on-critical-minerals-experts-say/
  12. DOE / Nevada Current – Lithium Plant Cost Thacker Pass ($2.26B): https://nevadacurrent.com/2024/03/15/lithium-americas-to-get-massive-federal-loan-to-develop-thacker-pass-mine/
  13. Fastmarkets – Copper Smelter Construction Cost ($1.8-2.5B): https://www.fastmarkets.com/insights/us-copper-smelting-equation-gap-or-glut-hotter-commodities-articles/