President Bola Ahmed Tinubu yesterday charged African countries to unite against the continued export of raw mineral resources, insisting that the continent must begin to derive greater economic value from its vast mineral wealth.
Tinubu, who spoke in New York, United States, during the third Africa Minerals Strategy Group (AMSG) High-Level Roundtable on Critical Minerals Development in Africa, also called for stronger continental cooperation to promote local processing, manufacturing and value addition.
The roundtable, held on the sidelines of the ongoing 81st Session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), was convened and chaired by the President alongside Vice President Kashim Shettima and the Chairman of AMSG and Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Dele Alake.
The high-level meeting, with the theme, “From Resources to Wealth: Continental Cooperation for Mineral Value Addition, Data Sovereignty, Innovative Financing and Critical Minerals Security,” focused on measures to transform Africa’s mineral resources into sustainable economic growth.
Represented by Shettima, Tinubu said Africa could not continue to supply the raw materials required for prosperity elsewhere while its mineral-rich communities remained deprived of infrastructure, jobs and meaningful participation in the wealth generated from their resources.
“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 noted that rising global demand for clean energy, artificial intelligence and advanced manufacturing had made African critical minerals, including cobalt, copper, lithium and rare earth elements, increasingly important to global supply chains and economic security.
He said the continent’s response should be increased processing and refining, battery and component production, technology development and skills acquisition.
“The worth of a mine must be counted in the lives it improves,” he said, stressing that jobs, industries, infrastructure, technology transfer, African enterprise participation and prosperity retained across generations should constitute the measure of progress from resources to wealth.
Tinubu also warned African countries against competing with one another through lower royalties, weaker local content requirements and excessive concessions, saying such practices would weaken the continent’s negotiating 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 for new mining licences, strengthen geological data and investor access, organise artisanal miners into cooperatives, combat illegal mining and improve regulatory accountability.
He disclosed that revenue from the mining sector rose from approximately N6 billion in 2023 to over N38 billion in 2024 and between N68.1 billion and N70 billion in 2025.
Tinubu also cited major foreign investment commitments and the development and commissioning of large-scale lithium processing capacity in Nasarawa State as evidence of the possibilities in the sector.
According to him, Nigeria’s mining policy direction requires minerals extracted in the country to support Nigerian industries, workers, skills and communities.
He therefore offered Nigeria’s experience to other African countries for adaptation, calling for partnerships based on mutual benefit, shared responsibility, sovereign equality, fair market access, industrial investment and technology transfer.
The President urged AMSG members to speak with one voice in advancing Africa’s collective interests, stressing that reliability must not translate into dependency while partnership must not produce inequality.
On the Continental Integration and Economic Assurance Declaration adopted and signed at the meeting, Tinubu said it should establish a predictable and investment-ready environment for Africa’s strategic mineral corridors through harmonised policies, responsible investment and shared infrastructure.
He, however, said the authority of the declaration must go beyond the signing ceremony and be backed by a binding programme with timelines, financing, implementation and public accountability.
Earlier, Alake said the proposed Continental Integration and Economic Assurance Declaration was a landmark framework designed to establish a unified architecture for Africa’s critical and solid minerals value chains.
He urged African countries that had yet to join the AMSG to do so, stressing the need for greater synergy of efforts, ideas and resources in developing the continent’s natural resources.
Alake said Africa’s mineral ambitions could not be achieved through policy implementation alone, stressing the need for integrated partnerships covering financial transactions and infrastructure development.
Also speaking, Kenya’s Minister of Blue Economy and Maritime Affairs, Hassan Ali Joho, underscored the importance of domestic resource mobilisation as a catalyst for solid minerals development in Africa.
Joho urged AMSG members to remain transparent and competitive and work towards greater alignment of licensing procedures while respecting the sovereignty of member states.
Representatives of Liberia, Chad and Tanzania, among other stakeholders, also contributed to the discussions.
