Success is built on the simple principle of self-reliance, a truth that has been obscured in recent African history but needs to be regained and reinforced. During my recent visit to Lusaka, I attended the launch of the Lobito Corridor project, an ambitious rail line supported by the United States, the European Union, three African nations, and two premier African institutions, the Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) and African Development Bank (AfDB).
This project aims to link the copper-rich regions of Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the Angolan port of Lobito, creating a vital trade route from the world’s richest copper belt to the Atlantic Ocean. This corridor is essential for facilitating transportation, fostering business, and enhancing trade in the region. It aligns perfectly with Washington’s increased soft-power strategy, reflecting a broader geopolitical intent to strengthen ties with Africa.
However, this initiative is not purely altruistic. The global clean energy transition requires significant amounts of critical minerals, essential for manufacturing solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles, batteries, and various applications in the defence, ICT, and pharmaceutical industries. The U.S.’s Inflation Reduction Act adds pressure to bring manufacturing back to American shores. To make America great again, raw materials from across the Atlantic are needed, with the accelerated pace of the transition requiring six times more mineral inputs by 2040. The Global North’s net-zero objectives will not be achieved without Africa’s green minerals.
Africa holds substantial reserves of bauxite, chromium, cobalt, copper, gold, iron, lithium, manganese, platinum, uranium, and more. This creates a great race ahead, with China currently dominating due to its longer history and significant investments in Africa’s core sectors, having spent over a trillion dollars securing key resources. This presents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Africa.
For African leaders, the question is not about choosing between the U.S. or China but about what Africa can negotiate from its resource advantage. Africa must capitalise on its mineral endowments to drive transformative sustainable growth, economic diversification, and regional development through value-added processing and manufacturing. It is essential to optimise resource value to support productive transformation, integration into global trade systems, and the development of local industries. Sustainable mining should act as a catalyst for local procurement, shared infrastructure, and renewable energy development.
However, it is crucial to ensure that these developments do not harm African communities, which often bear the brunt of vested interests, pollution, and environmental damage. Many critical minerals are found in areas of rich biodiversity, fragility, conflict, and lands traditionally belonging to indigenous peoples. Yet, events have conspired in Africa’s favour, presenting an opportunity to solve significant global challenges.
Africa should remain agnostic and seek partners who will support its economic objectives as equals in the global fight for equity and prosperity. African institutions like the AFC are embedding these priorities into policies, with success hinging on balancing access to mineral resources with environmental and social risks, improving infrastructure for local value addition, refining and processing, and inspiring international cooperation to shift from historically exploitative models to sustainable investments, technology transfer, capacity-building, and financing models that lift the continent meaningfully.
If mining fails to be a catalyst for sustainable development supporting renewable power generation, local procurement, and infrastructure, we will have failed. The Lobito Corridor promises to be an example where the corridors of power ensure that it is not just another rail line for transporting riches but one that enriches the people of the continent, solving global problems while serving its own people. Diplomacy and negotiations change, but all of this requires the self-belief that it is our destiny, and we must seize it ourselves.
Pensana plc (LON:PRE) explores and mines neodymium, praseodymium, and rare earth minerals. The Company’s flagship assets are the Saltend rare earth refinery project in the United Kingdom and Longonjo neodymium and praseodymium (NdPr) Project in Angola.
