Africa must seize the global critical minerals opportunity to accelerate industrialisation, create jobs and deepen regional economic integration rather than continue exporting raw materials, International Relations and Cooperation Minister Ronald Lamola argues.

Speaking at the Ambassadorial Breakfast on Africa's Growth Through Critical Minerals event, hosted by Absa in partnership with the Department of International Relations and Cooperation, in Johannesburg, on August 7, he said Africa's vast critical mineral endowment positioned the continent at the centre of the global energy transition.

He noted that Africa possesses many of the minerals required for clean energy technologies, including platinum group metals (PGMs), copper, manganese, bauxite and graphite, making the continent indispensable to the global transition to a low-carbon economy.

"Our continent has many of the minerals that are critical to the global energy transition. These minerals are essential to technologies, ranging from solar panels and wind turbines to electric vehicles and energy storage systems. Africa is, therefore, central to the transition to a low-carbon future," Lamola said.

However, Lamola cautioned that resource abundance alone would not guarantee prosperity and said Africa must break longstanding patterns in which minerals are exported for processing elsewhere before being re-imported as higher-value products.

He stressed the need for greater beneficiation and industrial capacity across the continent.

He also warned that rising demand for critical minerals could either usher in a new era of shared prosperity or intensify extraction, conflict and instability on the continent if governments failed to implement prudent, long-term and localised growth-enabling policies.

Meanwhile, Lamola has also welcomed policy interventions by countries including South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Malawi to promote local value addition, highlighting that these efforts support the implementation of the African Green Minerals Strategy and the G20 Critical Minerals Framework.

“Within [the G20 last year,] intra-Africa payment systems [were highlighted] as a critical area of cooperation.

“How we manage the promise and peril of this moment will determine whether we realise Agenda 2063’s vision of a peaceful, integrated and prosperous Africa anchored in the ideals of Pan-Africanism and the African Renaissance,” Lamola said.

He also stressed that industrialisation was essential to addressing Africa's demographic challenge, noting that while between ten-million and twenty-million young people enter the labour market each year, Africa creates only about three-million formal jobs a year.

Lamola’s remarks echoed those of Absa Group CEO Kenny Fihla, who highlighted that Africa had reached a defining moment as growing global demand for critical minerals repositioned the continent as a strategic player in the global economy.

“Africa is at an inflection point. Global demand for critical minerals has repositioned our continent as a strategic supplier to the world but the question we must now confront more fundamentally is whether Africa can harness this moment to power its own industrialisation,” Fihla said.

He also argued that unlocking the continent's mineral wealth would require closer collaboration between governments, finance and industry, stronger implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and greater investment in regional industrial capacity, adding that Africa's “future competitiveness would be determined not by what it extracts, but by what it builds”.

Lamola called on business to work alongside governments to accelerate growth through mining, manufacturing and agriculture, arguing that stronger public-private partnerships would be essential to unlocking Africa's economic potential.

He concluded by pointing out that addressing the root causes of migration, including unemployment, weak economic growth, climate change and conflict, would ultimately depend on creating more inclusive and integrated African economies capable of delivering jobs and long-term prosperity.