Short Abstract

Rising global competition over supply chains of transition minerals vital offers new opportunities and challenges for African mineral producers. This panel considers new evidence of leveraged investments, technology transfer and domestic participation in Africa’s booming transition minerals sector.

Long Abstract

Multipolar competition over access to transition minerals is rising among the USA, China, EU and emerging middle powers. African countries are significant providers of these materials and indications are the role of several countries as suppliers of essential transition minerals will expand in the coming decade. Evidence is emerging of African governments’ growing appetite for strengthening national benefits through a variety of regulatory reforms, including local content policies, ore export bans teamed with requirements for local mineral processing, greater local participation through shareholding arrangements, trusts and community engagement, and other interventions. At the same time, the legacy of state institutional weaknesses, rent-seeking and the extractive industries’ structural power threaten to negatively inflect the trajectory of policy innovation at a critical period in the local development of new African transition mineral industries. The panel invites papers which reflect on evidence from existing and new cases of regulatory innovations, including the areas of mining fiscal regimes, industrial policy, community benefits sharing, technology transfer and provisions for skills training, among other issues. Has the changing terrain of global supply chains created space for African innovation? What lessons can be learned from recent policy innovations on the continent?

Keywords: energy transition; transitional minerals; extractives industries; beneficiation; policy reform

Propose paper