Senior Officials of AU’s Specialized Committee on Trade Endorse African Green Minerals Strategy

The meeting of senior officials of the African Union First Extra-Ordinary Session of the Specialized Technical Committee on Trade, Tourism, Industry and Minerals (STC-TTIM) held from December 11 -12, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, has endorsed the Draft African Green Minerals Strategy (AGMS).

The AGMS, otherwise known as the African Union Minerals Resources Strategy for the Just Transition and Decarbonising Future, is in line with the Second 10-Year Implementation Plan of Agenda 2063. The Strategy is now billed for endorsement by the next sessions of the Executive Council and Assembly of the African Union in 2025.

The STC-TTIM senior officials’ session was chaired by Felicidad Nsee Nguema Mbengono, Director General of Commerce, Administration of Agreements and Treaties of the Republic of Equatorial Guinea under the theme “Enhancing Africa’s Trade Competitiveness through Tourism, Industrial and Mineral Resources Development.”

The endorsement followed a presentation by Dr Marit Kitaw, Interim Director of the African Minerals Development Center (AMDC), a specialized agency of the AU dedicated to the utilization of minerals for Africa’s sustainable development through implementing the Africa Mining Vision (AMV).

The AMDC chief pointed out that Green Minerals were at the core of the global energy transition with the production of many of these minerals currently more geo-spatially concentrated just as significant quantities of the minerals needed for the energy transition and green industries in particular Nickel, Manganese, Cobalt, Lithium and Graphite, are found in Africa.

Dr Kitaw said of the global green minerals reserves Africa hosts 6% of copper, 53% of cobalt, 25% of bauxite, 21% of graphite, 46% of manganese, 35% of chromite, 79% of phosphate rock, and 91% of platinum group metals, just as the demand for all the aforementioned is expected to increase at least six-fold by 2030.

“The alternative view of an AGMS for using Africa’s green minerals to support its resource-based industrialization and electrification considers Africa’s huge unrealized market for electrification of over 600 million unconnected citizens, a population of 1.4 billion people and offering three-quarters of the global connection opportunity, particularly for locally embedded clean and green energy. The AGMS may thus be seen as the strategy for the just transition and decarbonizing future,” she said.

The AMDC director emphasizes that Africa’s commodities-based industrialization potential is foreseeably energy and technology-intensive, given the focus of AU Member States and Regional Economic Communities on pursuing industrialization as the basis for economic growth. She further described industrialization as key to addressing the continent’s development and inequality challenges.

The senior officials recommended that the AU Commission develop implementation plans for the various pillars, be costed, resourced, and scheduled once the AGMS is adopted, and also carry out extensive sensitization and awareness activities on the African Green Minerals Strategy to all stakeholders placing emphasis on environmental sustainability and social equitability.