Reindustrialising Africa starts with regional value chains

THE Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Zambia together hold one of the world’s richest seams of the minerals that power the energy transition.

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The DRC produces around 70% of global cobalt, alongside vast copper reserves; Zambia is ‘Africa’ second-largest copper producer.

On paper, this should have been the foundation for a continental value chain: ore mined in Central Africa refined locally into battery precursors, then processed further in industrial hubs like South Africa, which has decades of experience in catalytic converters and metallurgical engineering.

The reality is much different. Most cobalt and copper leave the region in semi-processed form, shipped to Asia for refining and battery production.

While Zambia has invested in smelters and refineries, and the DRC has announced policies to encourage local beneficiation, progress has been uneven, and the effect is that instead of a stitched-together value chain, the region operates as a set of parallel nodes, each negotiating separately with external partners, and each capturing only a slice of the value that an integrated chain could hold.

It is a reminder that endowment alone does not create industry without the rules and investment to bind it together.

This “almost value chain” is a recurring pattern across the continent, and fragmentation is stifling industrialisation at precisely the moment it is most needed. Global supply chains are being rewritten under the weight of protectionism and shifting geopolitics: tariffs and subsidies in the United States, regulatory assertiveness in Europe, and a deliberate drive in Asia to secure critical inputs closer to home.