As the global economy transitions towards low-carbon energy systems and digital technologies, minerals such as lithium, cobalt, platinum group metals (PGMs), rare earth elements (REEs) and graphite have become central inputs into emerging industrial systems. Yet the conversation around "critical minerals" remain dominated by Global North perspectives, often overlooking Africa's unique context and developmental needs. Despite their growing importance, there is no universally accepted definition of what constitutes a critical mineral. National critical-minerals classifications vary considerably and are periodically updated, with current lists generally ranging from about 30 to 35 minerals across India, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and Canada.
This variation raises a fundamental policy question for African decision-makers: how can critical mineral policy be leveraged not only for global competitiveness but for domestic industrialisation, job creation and regional economic integration? Most existing critical mineral lists have been formulated by countries in the Global North in response to concerns about import dependence, supply-chain resilience and strategic competition. While these frameworks provide useful reference points, their direct application in African contexts risks prioritising global supply concerns over domestic development imperatives.
This article explores whether Africa requires its own definition of mineral criticality, one that positions resource wealth as a driver of sustainable economic transformation rather than a raw export commodity. It also examines the limitations of existing global frameworks, explores regional variations in mineral priorities, and outlines principles for an Africa-centred approach to defining critical minerals.
Limitations Of Global Critical Mineral Frameworks For Africa
The Global North's Supply-Focused Approach
In advanced, import-dependent economies, mineral criticality is primarily assessed through supply-side risk. Indicators such as geographic concentration of production, import reliance, economic importance dominate the analysis, often sidelining broader developmental considerations. These criteria are appropriate for economies seeking to secure uninterrupted access to externally sourced mineral inputs essential to high-technology manufacturing, defence and energy systems.
Structural Misalignment with African Producer Economies
The direct application of these frameworks to African contexts presents several limitations. Firstly, they prioritise minerals based on scarcity and import exposure, metrics that undervalue minerals crucial for domestic industrialisation. Secondly, they tend to overlook minerals that are globally abundant but foundational for domestic industrial development, such as iron ore for steel production. Third, they reflect the technological priorities of advanced economies rather than the structural transformation objectives of developing economies, including infrastructure expansion, manufacturing capability and employment creation. Finally, they fail to address Africa’s historical extraction patterns and institutional constraints that limit African value capture, perpetuating dependency on raw materials exports.
Africa's Mineral Wealth: Abundance Without Strategic Alignment
Southern Africa illustrates the divergence between Africa's mineral endowment and prevailing global definitions of criticality. The region hosts substantial reserves of minerals central to both energy-transition technologies and broader industrial development. The Democratic Republic of Congo holds the world's largest cobalt reserves; Zimbabwe has emerged as an important lithium producer; South Africa accounts for significant global production of PMGs, manganese and vanadium; Namibia is developing rare earth element capacity; and Zambia and Botswana remain important copper producers, including within the emerging Kalahari Copper Belt. Yet global critical mineral lists rarely reflect the strategic importance of these resources to African development agendas.
Within the Southern African Development Community (SADC), national interpretations of mineral criticality vary according to economic structure, industrial capability and development priorities. South Africa places emphasis on PGMs, manganese, vanadium and iron ore, while Zambia, Zimbabwe and Namibia prioritise copper, lithium and rare earth elements. This regional diversity underscores the need for an Africa-centred framework that balances national priorities with collective industrial ambitions.
Towards A Locally Relevant Framework
South Africa's Development-Centric Model
South Africa defines critical minerals as those essential to economic development, employment creation, industrial advancement and national security. Its framework extends beyond supply risk to include export significance, local economic impact, industrial relevance, alignment with national development priorities, and current and projected global demand. This approach exemplifies how a country can integrate mineral policy with broader socio-economic objectives.
South Africa's classification differentiates between minerals of high criticality (including platinum, manganese, iron ore, coal and chrome ore), moderate to high criticality (such as gold, vanadium, palladium, rhodium and rare earth elements), and moderate criticality (including copper, cobalt, lithium, graphite, nickel, titanium, phosphate, fluorspar, zirconium, uranium and aluminium). Notably, the inclusion of coal and iron ore, largely absent from Global North critical mineral lists, highlights the need to contextualise criticality in terms of national development priorities rather than purely global supply concerns.
Principles for an Africa-Centred Critical Minerals Framework
A locally relevant framework should be guided by the following principles:
- Development-oriented assessment
Mineral criticality should be evaluated primarily in terms of contribution to development outcomes, including employment, industrialisation, infrastructure development, fiscal revenues, foreign exchange generation, and skills and technology transfer.
Assessments should account for a country’s position within mineral value chains. For producer countries, this includes processing and manufacturing potential; for resource-constrained economies, it may relate to affordability of imports and participation in regional supply chains.
Given the uneven distribution of mineral resources across the continent, a regional or continental framework should explicitly recognise interdependencies and promote cross-border value chains that leverage comparative advantages.
- Sovereignty and historical context
A locally relevant framework must preserve policy space to safeguard long-term national interests and address historical patterns of extraction that have limited domestic value capture.
Criticality should be treated as a dynamic concept, subject to periodic review and updating in response to evolving market conditions, technological change, substitutability, recycling potential and geopolitical developments.
Policy, Investment And Beneficiation Implications
Policy implications
The unmodified adoption of Global North critical mineral frameworks may encourage African countries to prioritise minerals primarily for export, design incentive structures that favour foreign investment without strengthening domestic productive capacity, or adopt regulatory standards that are difficult to implement in emerging-economy contexts. A development-oriented criticality framework can mitigate these risks by ensuring that mineral policy actively supports national industrialisation and development objectives.
Despite being leading global producers of several strategically important minerals, many African countries remain concentrated in upstream extraction with limited downstream processing. A development-centred criticality framework can inform differentiated fiscal and royalty regimes, guide the selective use of export controls on unprocessed ores and support targeted infrastructure investment for priority mineral value chains.
While regulatory predictability is essential for attracting and retaining investment, governments must retain sufficient policy flexibility to respond to evolving national priorities and structural constraints. Overly rigid policy instruments, particularly premature export restrictions, risk undermining fiscal revenues, employment and economic stability where domestic processing capacity is not yet established.
Investment implications
A locally grounded framework can attract investment aligned with development goals by signalling priorities for local processing, encouraging partnerships incorporating technology transfer and skills development, and supporting integration into regional value chains. Without such strategic intervention, Africa risks remaining a supplier of raw materials, miss opportunities to capture higher-value segments of the market.
Beneficiation implications
Beneficiation is capital- and energy-intensive, and not all minerals warrant immediate downstream processing. A critical minerals framework can differentiate between minerals suitable for near-term beneficiation, phased development or strategic export.
Regional co-ordination can enhance efficiency, enabling African countries to collectively scale processing capabilities and leverage comparative advantage, infrastructure availability, and logistical considerations.
When Global Lists Miss African Priorities: Three Case Studies
Iron ore: Critical for industrialisation
Iron ore is classified as a mineral of high criticality within South Africa's framework, yet it is largely absent from Global North critical mineral lists, reflecting its global abundance and limited supply risk for advanced economies. This illustrates how Africa-centric definitions can identify minerals that are essential for structural transformation.
Coal: Developmental dependence in a transitioning world
Coal's inclusion in South Africa's high-criticality category highlights the tension between global climate objectives and domestic development realities. An Africa-centred framework acknowledges the need for differentiated transition pathways tailored to national contexts.
Platinum group metals: Resource dominance without value capture
Southern Africa accounts for the majority of global platinum group metal production, with South Africa and Zimbabwe together supplying a substantial share of world output. Despite this, the region captures limited value from downstream applications, highlighting the importance of aligning critical mineral strategies with industrial policy.
Redefining Criticality For African Development
The concept of "critical minerals" is meaningful for Africa only if it is framed around the continent's development priorities rather than imported definitions of strategic scarcity. Historically, Africa has supplied raw materials that supported industrial development elsewhere, often with limited domestic value addition. The renewed global focus on critical minerals offers an opportunity to reassess this trajectory.
Southern Africa's experience demonstrates both the scale of the opportunity and the risks of policy fragmentation. Without a co-ordinated approach to beneficiation, infrastructure development and industrial policy, African countries risk remaining peripheral players in global value chains.
An African critical minerals framework must therefore be development-oriented, regionally integrated and forward-looking, anticipating technological change and positioning economies to capture value from emerging industries. By defining critical minerals through an African-centred lens, the continent can turn its resource wealth into catalyst for sustainable industrial growth, employment and regional economic resilience.
