Representing President Bola Tinubu at the 81st UN General Assembly in New York, Vice President Kashim Shettima urged African nations on Monday to stop exporting raw mineral wealth without capturing downstream processing value. The high-level roundtable focused on resource sovereignty, local beneficiation, and a new continental economic integration framework.
For generations, mineral-rich communities across Africa have lived in poverty while extraction industries shipped raw materials abroad to fuel prosperity elsewhere. That enduring contradiction took center stage at the Third Africa Minerals Strategy Group High-Level Roundtable, held on the sidelines of the ongoing United Nations General Assembly in New York. The gathering brought together African ministers from member countries, mining ministers, development finance executives, and international partners to confront a continent-spanning dilemma.
For generations, Africa has furnished the materials of prosperity elsewhere,
Tinubu said in an address delivered by Vice President Kashim Shettima. Our duty is to ensure that the future being fashioned from African minerals has room for African ambition.
Continental Cooperation Versus Fragmented Competition
Global demand for clean energy technologies, artificial intelligence infrastructure, and advanced manufacturing has made Africa’s reserves of cobalt, copper, lithium, and rare earth elements indispensable to modern supply chains. Yet African leaders warned that individual nations continue to undermine their collective leverage by undercutting one another.
According to reports from the high-level dialogue, competing for foreign investment through lower royalty rates, relaxed local-content requirements, and excessive concessions has left the continent economically fragmented. The roundtable stressed that this race to the bottom ensures Africa continues to export raw commodities only to buy finished goods back at steep premiums.
“Fragmentation leaves us exporting raw materials and buying finished goods at a premium. Cooperation gives our markets scale, our industries integration, our financing reach and our negotiations authority.”
President Bola Tinubu, delivered via Vice President Kashim Shettima at UNGA
To counter this dynamic, the strategy group advanced the Mutual Assured Development (MADE) Framework alongside the newly signed Continental Integration and Economic Assurance Declaration. Delegates emphasized that the declaration must move beyond symbolic diplomacy into binding implementation programs backed by verifiable timelines, regional processing corridors, and coordinated financing platforms.
Nigeria’s Domestic Policy Shift and Rising Mining Revenues
Highlighting domestic reforms, Nigerian officials pointed to tangible fiscal growth resulting from stricter mineral policies.
Those revenue gains coincide with mandatory local value addition requirements for new mining licenses and major foreign investment commitments. Large-scale lithium processing capacity developed and commissioned in Nasarawa State serves as a primary domestic example of how firm regulatory terms can attract serious capital without sacrificing host-community benefits.
Formalising Artisanal Mining and Enhancing Safety Across Africa
Beyond large-scale industrial processing, the roundtable addressed the perilous realities facing informal workers across the continent. Dr. Dele Alake, Nigeria’s Minister of Solid Minerals Development and Chairman of the Africa Minerals Strategy Group, called for urgent structural reforms to integrate artisanal miners into regulated systems.
“Illegal mining must remain illegal, but artisanal miners should have a structured framework that allows them to operate legally and safely.”
Dr. Dele Alake, Minister of Solid Minerals Development and AMSG Chairman