Africa Cannot Afford to Repeat the Mistakes of the Oil Era in the Critical Minerals Boom

There is a photograph I keep in my mind, a memory rather than an image. It is of a dusty road in the Niger Delta, the air thick with the smell of gas flaring in the distance. As a young boy, I watched oil trucks thunder down that road, carrying wealth I would never see. Around them, homes were sinking into poverty, their wooden frames warped by saltwater and neglect. The oil boom was not a boom for us. It was a story written elsewhere, in boardrooms and capitals far from the communities that lived beside the pipelines.

Today, as Africa becomes the epicentre of a new global rush, this time for critical minerals such as cobalt, lithium, manganese, graphite, copper and rare earths, I feel that same childhood unease rising again.

The names have changed, the minerals have changed, the narratives have changed. But the danger has not.
Africa stands at a crossroads, and the stakes could not be higher.

For if we do not act with clarity, courage and memory, the critical minerals boom will become the oil era all over again, extraction without transformation, wealth without development, and promises without justice.

The minerals the world cannot transition without

The world’s clean-energy future depends on what lies beneath African soil. The batteries that power electric vehicles, the storage systems that stabilise renewable grids, the technologies that promise a decarbonised future, all require the minerals Africa holds in extraordinary abundance.

Cobalt from the DRC.
Manganese from South Africa and Ghana.
Lithium from Zimbabwe and Namibia.
Graphite from Tanzania and Mozambique.
Copper from Zambia.
Platinum and nickel from South Africa.

Africa is not marginal to the global energy transition; it is central to it. And yet, being central does not guarantee being prosperous.
We have lived this truth already.

We have been here before

The oil era taught Africa a brutal lesson:
Natural wealth means nothing if the systems built around it are designed to export value rather than create it.

In the 1970s and 1980s, African oil exporters were told that crude exports would produce a new middle class, transform cities, and finance development. Instead, pipelines became the boundary lines of inequality, environmental devastation became normalised, and governments became dependent on revenue streams they never fully controlled.

The oil boom concentrated wealth rather than distributing it.
It created volatility, instability and it left many communities worse off, not better.

Oil became a cautionary tale etched into the continent’s memory.

That memory is what makes this critical minerals moment feel so urgent, and so fragile.

The "green rush" still follows familiar rules

Today, mining companies, old and new, are arriving with slogans about sustainability, climate leadership, and a greener world. Their language is polished, and their climate commitments are glossy. But scratch the surface, and the incentives remain largely unchanged: extract quickly, export cheaply, refine elsewhere, and maximise shareholder returns.

Meanwhile, the communities living near critical mineral deposits face realities the world rarely mentions:

• Displacement from ancestral land
• Pollution of farms and waterways
• Informal mine work that risks lives
• Wages that cannot support a family
• Schools without electricity, even as mineral power, global EVs
• Towns that rise and fall with commodity prices
• Little transparency in contracts or revenue flows

It is the oil story, rewritten in the language of climate action.

And that is why the stakes are so high.

The world frames these minerals as essential for a clean future.
But for Africa, the question is far deeper: Will this future be clean for us too?

The old model cannot become the new future

There is a dangerous assumption in some global climate and industry circles: that Africa will supply the minerals while other regions build the technology, the factories, the wealth.

Minerals from Africa.
Jobs in Europe.
Refineries in China.
Patents in the United States.
Profits scattered across the world.

And African communities? We are left with dust.

This is the old model; extract, export, repeat, wrapped in new packaging.

Africa must refuse it.

Critical minerals must not only be mined in Africa; they must be processed, refined, manufactured, and transformed in Africa.

This is not an emotional argument. It is an economic one. And also one of sovereignty, and justice.

And without this shift, the clean-energy transition will be clean everywhere except in the places where minerals are pulled from the earth.

Value addition is not ambition, it is survival

The reason Africa must not repeat the oil era is simple: raw mineral exports do not build nations.

A kilogram of cobalt ore might sell for a few dollars.
The same cobalt, once refined and incorporated into a battery precursor, could be worth more than ten times as much.
Inside a finished EV battery, the value multiplies again.

Africa cannot compete in the 21st century as a raw-material supplier.
We will compete, or fail, as industrial economies.

This means:

• Building refineries
• Producing battery-grade chemicals
• Manufacturing cathode precursors
• Assembling battery packs
• Developing recycling industries
• Training technicians, engineers, and chemists
• Powering industrial zones with renewable energy
• Enforcing environmental protections
• Ensuring local communities gain real benefits

This is what it means to learn from the oil era.

Communities must be more than footnotes

f the critical minerals boom replicates the oil era, communities will remain peripheral, the people who live above the minerals but reap almost none of the rewards.

This is morally indefensible.

The people closest to the mines should be the first to benefit, not the last.
Not through charity, but through rights:

• Local ownership
• Community development agreements
• Transparent royalty mechanisms
• Health and environmental protection
• Participation in decision-making
• Job pathways beyond unskilled labour

Because a mine that enriches a multinational corporation while impoverishing a town is not progress.
It is extraction dressed as development.

Africa must set the terms, not just follow them

There is one truth that gives me hope:
Africa now has leverage it never had in the oil era.

The world cannot build its renewable future without the minerals we hold.
This gives Africa bargaining power, economic power, political power, strategic power.

But power unused is power wasted. Therefore, Africa must:

• Demand fair prices
• Negotiate for local processing
• Refuse harmful contract terms
• Strengthen state capacity
• Build regulatory systems that outlive political cycles
• Cooperate regionally instead of competing destructively

To avoid repeating the oil era, Africa must not only remember the past. It must rewrite it.

A new vision for the critical minerals age

Imagine if Africa decided that:

• No mineral leaves the continent unprocessed
• Every mining project funds local skills academies
• Mineral revenues build renewable-powered industrial corridors
• Battery precursor plants rise in mineral-rich regions
• Recycling becomes a new circular industry
• Communities gain equity stakes in the value chain
• Environmental standards become stricter, not looser

This is not unrealistic. It is what sovereignty looks like in the energy-transition age.

A final reflection: The past is warning us

I think of that dusty road in the Niger Delta often.
The trucks.
The gas flares.
The silence of people who gained nothing from the wealth moving around them.

Africa cannot afford to experience that silence again.

Critical minerals represent a once-in-a-century opportunity.
But they also represent a once-in-a-century risk.

If Africa builds an economy of factories, not pits; of skills, not scars; of value, not vulnerability, then this moment will mark the beginning of a new African future.

But if we repeat the mistakes of the oil era, the world will drive its clean cars into a future powered by African suffering.

We cannot let history rhyme so painfully.
Not this time.
Not again.