Africa critical minerals cooperation must move beyond extraction
Jul 16, 2026
COMMENTARYPhoto credits: EPC
As the EU races to secure critical minerals for its green and industrial transitions, partnerships with African countries will only succeed if they deliver more than extraction. To build resilient supply chains and remain competitive, Europe must back industrialisation, strengthen investment incentives, and ensure tangible benefits for local communities.
Securing resilient access to critical minerals (CRMs) is essential for the EU’s clean transition, digitalisation and defence. Global demand for lithium, for example, is projected to increase by more than 350% by 2040. Yet the EU remains dependent on a limited number of suppliers, with China controlling around 70% of global mineral processing and refining. Intensifying geopolitical competition and growing export restrictions leave the EU exposed to supply chain disruptions, mitigating access to critical minerals.
The European Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA) seeks to reduce this dependence by diversifying supply chains, particularly
Africa has become central to this strategy. The continent holds abundant reserves of many critical minerals, but most investment is still devoted to extraction rather than stages of the mining process with higher added value, processing or manufacturing. At the same time, African governments increasingly want mineral wealth to support domestic industries, create jobs and generate greater economic value.
The EU’s interest in enabling sustainable prosperity in Africa goes beyond humanitarian and development goals. Geo-economic pressures to remain competitive strengthen the case for the EU to deliver on its commitments to increase added value while ensuring tangible social and environmental benefits for local communities. Otherwise, African countries may favour alternative partners, such as China, the United States and Gulf states, which already boast a presence in African mining sectors.
EU–Africa critical mineral cooperation
The EU has already signed critical minerals partnerships with <a href="https://absafricatv.com/south-africa-children-of-immigrants-forced-to-leave-south-african-schools/" title="South Africa: Children of Immigrants Forced to Leave South African Schools”>South Africa, Rwanda, Namibia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Zambia. Under the CRMA, it has also designated ‘strategic projects’ in South Africa, Zambia, and in Malawi. Beyond EU-level action, eight member states have pursued country-to-country critical mineral partnerships with African countries.
EU and member states’ partnerships are backed by financing instruments, including commitments to mobilise €300 billion in public and private investments through the Global Gateway, the EU’s flagship investment initiative in the Global South, coupled with member states’ additional critical minerals funds. Preferential access to the EU market, and the EU-South Africa Clean Trade and Investment Partnership (CTIP), seek to facilitate critical mineral trade by reducing market barriers.
While these initiatives provide a strong foundation for EU-Africa critical mineral cooperation, emphasis on mining has attracted growing scrutiny over tensions with sustainability objectives and shortcomings in delivering mutual benefits. Mining can drive deforestation, water and soil pollution, while its high energy demands may divert scarce re million people lack access to affordable energy
Diversifying supply chains: barriers to private investment
The success of EU-Africa critical mineral cooperation depends on mobilising private investment in the African mining sector. However, critical mineral partnerships are yet to translate to new investment or value addition in Africa, with the Lobito Corridor initiative among the limited projects to reach advanced stages. Private investment mobilisation, particularly in higher value-added sectors, remains constrained by investor risk perceptions, including high capital costs, uneven energy and transport infrastructure conditions, skills shortages and regulatory uncertainty across African countries.
EU and member state initiatives are currently ill-equipped to address these concerns due to their fragmented and non-binding nature, as well as their insufficient integration with development cooperation. The lack of complementary demand-side measures, including demand aggregation, non-price public procurement criteria and long-term purchasing and offtake agreements, present additional bottlenecks for building alternative industrial ecosystems. Even if EU partnerships mobilise investment, mineral revenues risk being captured by elites, reinforcing the ‘resource curse’ and limiting broader development gains.
Ultimately, this reflects the broader challenge of aligning the EU’s geopolitical and commercial interests with African development priorities, and their capacity to undertake energy transitions.
Beyond extraction
Achieving the EU’s supply chain diversification objectives will require moving beyond political partnerships and towards commercially the EU and African countries
To diversify supply chains, the EU should:
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Close coordination gaps across EU and member state initiatives by using the Critical Raw Material Act (CRMA) governance framework to align partnerships, strategic projects and financing.
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Introduce demand aggregation and non-price public–procurement criteria to strengthen incentives for diversified and responsible supply chains.
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Expand circular economy cooperation, including battery recycling, e-waste recovery and mine tailings reprocessing to leverage European expertise while increasing coherence with wider EU sustainability objectives by reducing primary demand.
To ensure mutual benefits, the EU should:
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Adopt a phased public-private partnership approach, combining upfront investment in energy and transport with binding commitments to mining, processing and refining.
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Align development cooperation with critical mineral initiatives to strengthen infrastructure, skills and regulatory capacity.
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Use long-term purchasing and offtake agreements for minerals processed or refined in African partner countries.
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Embed partnerships into robust environmental, social and governance (ESG) and corporate sustainability safeguards, with transparent governance and meaningful community engagement throughout project design and implementation.
Eszter Szedlacsek is a Policy Analyst at the European Policy Centre.
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