Short Abstract

How does the global just transition look when refracted through African prisms? This panel examines “critical minerals” through African experiences, sovereignty ambitions, knowledge and governance, asking what they reveal about the possibilities and contradictions of global green growth paradigms.

Long Abstract

The global green and digital transition, alongside evolving geopolitics, is driving rapidly growing demand for “critical minerals” essential to renewable energy and digital infrastructures. Across Africa, new and expanding mineral projects are being positioned as vital not only to a sustainable global future, but also to African ambitions for economic growth, value addition, industrialisation and structural transformation. Yet, viewed through African prisms, green growth paradigms appear less singular: promises of decarbonisation, sovereignty and development intersect with longer histories of extraction, unequal value capture, environmental injustice and contested relations between communities, states and corporations.

This panel asks what happens when the global just transition is understood from African mineral landscapes rather than primarily from centres of global policymaking. We approach these landscapes not simply as suppliers of the material foundations of decarbonisation, digitalisation or “strategic autonomy”, but as prisms through which dominant understandings of criticality, sustainability and just transition can be reconsidered. While “critical minerals” provide the point of departure, contributions may situate emerging projects and policies within wider (non-)extractive landscapes, including established mining economies, artisanal and small-scale mining, biodiversity and degrowth agendas.

We invite contributions examining how African actors experience, negotiate and contest changing extractive dynamics; whether mineral projects can advance sovereignty, local value creation and equitable development; how local knowledge and governance shape alternatives; and how global frameworks interact with these ambitions. Ultimately, the panel asks how African experiences can transform prevailing ideas of sovereignty, green growth and just transition.

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