RICH RESOURCES POOR RETURNS

FROM COPPER TO COBALT, THE CONTINENT IS RICH IN THE RAW MATERIALS THE WORLD NEEDS FOR CLEAN ENERGY AND TECHNOLOGY. BUT CAN IT STOP EXPORTING VALUE AND START OWNING THE FUTURE?

- Tiana Cline

What do fireworks, medical implants and solar panels have in common? It might sound like the start of a joke, but the answer is actually copper, a critical mineral globally that's quietly essential to everything from surgical-grade wiring and electric circuits to renewable energy infrastructure and explosive pyrotechnics. And, more importantly, a great deal of it comes from Africa.

From Zambia's copper belts to the Democratic Republic of the Congo's (DRC) cobalt reserves, from Mozambique's graphite to Zimbabwe's lithium, Africa holds the building blocks of the clean energy transition. “Almost each and every country in Africa does have some endowment that is quite significant,” says Professor Glen Nwaila, the Director of the African Research Centre for Ore Systems Science at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. Nwaila works within the discipline of geometallurgy combination of geology, metallurgy and machine learning (ML). But having minerals doesn't mean holding power.

Africa might be a significant producer, but it is not yet a strategic player. The continent is largely boxed into the upstream: digging, drilling, exporting. The downstream refining, processing and value creation-happens elsewhere. Amine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Steel balls and circular logic

And then there are the steel balls. Used in every mineral processing plant, these heavy-duty spheres are vital for crushing and milling ore. Across the continent, from Mali to South Africa, mining operations rely on them daily. And even though South Africa is the continent's largest and most industrialized iron ore producer, most steel balls are imported from India. “We don’t even buy them from South Africa,” says Nwaila. “We buy them in bulk from India because it’s cheaper. But what are we losing in the process? Skills. Jobs. A side-stream economy.”