For decades, Africa’s role in the global mining industry has largely been defined by the extraction and export of raw minerals. But as the world accelerates towards a clean energy future, simply producing critical minerals will no longer be enough. The bigger question, according to mining strategist Hera Mpondo, is whether Africa is financing the industries that capture the real value of those resources.
Speaking during the panel discussion at the Africa Critical Minerals & Energy Transition Dialogue 2026, organised by the Africa Centre for Critical Minerals & Energy Transition (ACCET), Mpondo challenged policymakers, investors, and industry leaders to rethink the continent’s approach to financing critical minerals. Rather than asking how to finance more mining projects, she urged stakeholders to ask a more fundamental question: What exactly are we financing?
Drawing on more than a decade of experience advising governments and investors across Africa’s mining sector, Mpondo argued that the global energy transition is fundamentally changing the economics of natural resources. Unlike the fossil fuel era, where value was created through continuous fuel consumption, the clean energy economy depends on manufacturing technologies powered by critical minerals.
“The energy transition is not primarily a fuel story; it is a material story.”
This shift, she explained, places Africa in a strategically important position. The continent possesses substantial reserves of cobalt, lithium, manganese, graphite, platinum, and other minerals that are indispensable for batteries, electric vehicles, renewable energy systems, and energy storage technologies.
Yet despite this resource wealth, Africa continues to capture only a small fraction of the economic value generated along global mineral value chains.
“Africa cannot be a guest at this conversation. Africa is actually the ground this conversation should stand on.”
Mpondo illustrated this imbalance by examining the lithium value chain. While several African countries have begun investing in mineral processing facilities, many projects stop at intermediate stages of production, leaving higher-value chemical refining, battery manufacturing, and advanced processing concentrated elsewhere.
As a result, she noted, Africa may be creating value without necessarily capturing it.
“The value you create is not necessarily the value you capture.”
According to Mpondo, this distinction is critical. Facilities may be built on African soil, but ownership structures, financing arrangements, and transfer pricing mechanisms often allow much of the economic value to flow beyond the continent.
She cautioned that policy responses focused solely on restricting raw mineral exports are unlikely to solve this challenge. While export bans may encourage more local processing, they do not automatically build African industrial capability or increase domestic ownership of value chains.
Instead, she called for a more comprehensive approach to investment—one that prioritises the entire mineral value chain rather than extraction alone.
“We are good at financing the hole in the ground,” she observed, referring to mining operations. The real financing gap, however, lies in everything that follows: refining facilities, transport corridors, reliable electricity infrastructure, industrial parks, technology transfer, and the skilled workforce required to sustain downstream industries.
Mpondo also emphasised the importance of regional cooperation. Many processing facilities, she argued, are only commercially viable when supported by mineral supplies from multiple African countries. This makes regional integration essential for developing competitive refining and manufacturing industries capable of serving global markets.
Equally important is expanding African participation in financing the sector. While African pension funds collectively manage hundreds of billions of dollars in assets, only a small proportion is invested in mining and industrial development. Mobilising domestic capital, she suggested, would strengthen African ownership and ensure a greater share of mineral wealth remains within the continent.
Ultimately, Mpondo argued that Africa’s success in the global energy transition will not be determined solely by the quantity of minerals it produces, but by how far it climbs the value chain and who owns the industries built around those resources.
Her keynote concluded with a powerful challenge for policymakers and investors alike: the future debate should no longer focus on whether Africa can process its minerals, but on how far up the value chain the continent is prepared to go—and who will ultimately finance and own that transformation.
As countries across Africa seek to reposition themselves within the rapidly evolving critical minerals economy, Mpondo’s intervention reinforced a central message of the Dialogue: the greatest opportunity lies not beneath the ground, but in the industries, infrastructure, and institutions that convert mineral wealth into long-term economic prosperity.
