Dig, Ship, Repeat? The Extractivist Trap in Africa’s Critical Minerals Boom

Walk into any electric vehicle showroom in Berlin, Los Angeles or Shanghai, and you are looking at Africa. The cobalt that steadies the battery, the copper that carries the current, and the manganese that strengthens the cathode are dug from African soil. The continent has become the unspoken backbone of the global energy transition.

Yet history casts a long shadow. For centuries, Africa’s raw materials have powered other continents, leaving little wealth at home. Palm oil, gold, rubber, copper, oil, etc, the story was often the same: dig, ship, repeat. Now, in the age of climate urgency, the same trap is opening around critical minerals. Unless governance changes, Africa’s minerals will once again be exported cheaply, while the real value, the batteries, the cars, and technology, is imported back at a premium.

This is the central irony of the clean energy revolution: the drive to build a greener world could lock Africa into another dirty past.

Stabilisation clauses: freezing the future

What makes this trap particularly insidious is governance. In many mining agreements, companies secure stabilisation clauses that freeze tax rates, royalties, and regulatory conditions for decades. While this provides investors with certainty, it chains African treasuries to deals that remain static while global prices fluctuate.

When copper or cobalt prices surge, governments cannot raise royalties to reflect the windfall. When environmental standards evolve, reforms are stymied by the fear of arbitration. Consider the DRC, which supplies more than 70% of the world’s cobalt. Even with soaring demand, revenues remain disproportionately low. Why? Because contract structures written years ago continue to dictate today’s returns.

“If climate urgency drives up demand for lithium, why should Africa’s revenues stay frozen in time?”

The “new oil” curse?

Critical minerals are being hailed as the new oil. But the comparison cuts both ways. Oil once promised transformation in Nigeria, Angola and Equatorial Guinea. It delivered some revenues, yes, but also corruption, environmental devastation, and Dutch disease. Jobs are scarce, economies distorted, and communities left in poverty.

Now, lithium, cobalt and manganese risk becoming the “new oil curse”. Mining towns are already seeing familiar patterns: environmental degradation, unsafe artisanal mining, and elite capture of revenues. In Kolwezi, children toil in hazardous pits, even as Tesla’s market capitalisation surpasses the GDP of entire African states.

The danger is stark: Africa could remain the quarry while others assemble the future. The narrative becomes another century of dig, ship, repeat, minerals out, finished technology in.

Why this matters now

Timing is everything. The International Energy Agency forecasts that demand for lithium could grow fivefold by 2040; cobalt demand is expected to double. Battery metals are becoming the most strategic commodities of the 21st century. Whoever controls supply chains controls the future of mobility, storage and power.

China has understood this. It dominates Africa’s mining sector, not only through investment in extraction but also by controlling refining capacity. The EU and US, through their Critical Minerals Acts, are scrambling to secure supply lines but largely exclude African processing. Without a continental response, Africa will again be the supplier of ores, not of opportunity.

A people’s perspective: mining towns in the shadows

The human cost of extraction often goes missing in policy discussions. In Guinea’s bauxite belt, communities live with dust-choked air and broken infrastructure while bauxite ships depart for China. In Zimbabwe, lithium mines have displaced farming families with little compensation. In Zambia, copper revenues flow, but schools and clinics remain underfunded.

This is the bitter paradox: Africa digs the minerals that light up Teslas in California and batteries in Europe, but many mining towns remain literally in the dark. For the people living alongside the mines, “just transition” is a distant phrase. Their reality is unpaved roads, polluted rivers, and promises that seldom reach.

“Africa digs, the world drives Teslas, but mining towns stay in the dark.”

Beyond rhetoric: building value at home

To break the cycle, Africa must shift from extraction to transformation. That means industrialisation through value addition. Three pathways stand out:

1. Domestic beneficiation. Countries such as Zimbabwe have announced bans on raw lithium exports to encourage local processing. Zambia and the DRC are piloting a regional EV battery corridor. These efforts face hurdles: high energy costs, weak infrastructure, and a lack of skilled labour, but they set the right direction.
2. Regional supply chains. No single African country can host the full chain from ore to battery. But a regional approach, copper from Zambia, cobalt from DRC, assembly in South Africa, ports in Tanzania, could build collective strength.
3. Continental bargaining power. Just as OPEC coordinates oil, Africa could coordinate minerals. An African Battery Alliance could set rules, harmonise mining codes, and prevent the “race to the bottom” where states undercut each other for investor favour.

The governance frontier

Industrialisation is not enough; governance must evolve. Transparency in contracts, community revenue sharing, and gender-inclusive participation are essential. Civil society networks like Publish What You Pay are already pushing for contract disclosure and stronger regulatory regimes.

The challenge is political will. In too many capitals, mining revenues remain opaque and captured by elites. Without accountability, even beneficiation, risks becoming another elite rent-seeking scheme. The transition must be not only green but just, a governance revolution as much as an industrial one.

What Africa should demand at COP30

The climate summit will be a critical stage. Here is what African negotiators should put on the table:

• Finance for value addition. Not just concessional loans for extraction, but grants and guarantees to build refineries, processing plants and grids.
• Technology transfer. Partnerships that bring know-how, not just bulldozers.
• Regional industrial policy support. Recognition that Africa must climb the value chain, not remain a quarry.
• Mineral justice. Ensure the language of a “just transition” includes communities on mining frontlines, not only coal workers in Europe.

This is not protectionism; rather, it is justice. If the world needs Africa’s minerals for a clean transition, it must pay fair value and support Africa’s climb up the ladder.

The bottom line

Africa stands at a crossroads. Critical minerals could be the foundation of a new industrial age, or the chains of a new extractive cycle. The difference will be governance and making the right decisions.

The choice is between dig, ship, repeat, a century-old pattern or mine, refine, prosper, a future where Africa owns a share of the green economy it sustains.

“The question is not whether Africa will mine. It’s whether Africa will mine and rise, or just mine and repeat.”