Alake: Africa needs uniformity to boost mineral development

Guardian Nigeria

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00:00Nigeria's Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Delia Alake, has stressed the need for Africa to

00:05speak with one voice in developing mineral resources on the continent. According to the

00:10Minister, the African Minerals Strategy Group, formed in 2024, is driving the uniformity in

00:16policy initiative and regulatory framework. In a chat with CNBC Africa on the sidelines of the

00:22Future Minerals Forum in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Alake stressed the need for an end to mineral

00:27exploitation on the continent. Take a listen. For us, a platform such as this enables us

00:35to cross-fertilize ideas, to brainstorm with the sole objective of developing the solid mineral

00:43sector of the global energy area. Don't forget that the trend now globally is for transition

00:53into green energy. The world is gradually moving away from fossil fuel because of the adverse

01:01effects of global warming. And then there's this clamor for transition to green energy.

01:09And what are the ingredients necessary to power the transition, I mean, into green energy?

01:17You're talking about solar, hydro, and solid minerals, and real, you know, critical metals.

01:25And these are essentially lithium, you know, cobalt, and nickel, and all of that,

01:33other, you know, minerals. So it is important for platforms such as this to bring heads together,

01:42the various mining countries, or potentially mining countries together, to brainstorm and

01:50exchange ideas with a view to sanitizing the operating environment. For instance, there are

01:55certain issues in mining. There's environmental issues. You have to think of the host communities,

02:01you know, beneficiation for the host communities. There's environmental remediation issues. And then,

02:07of course, there is a profit orientation of the whole because business is not a charity thing,

02:14you know. So there is a need to balance a lot of these competing interests. So when you bring

02:20stakeholders, the operators of the sector together, ideas flourish. And, of course,

02:29you talk about sustainability, ESG, CSR, and all of such ancillary issues. So coming together

02:37like this will bring out the ideas with a view to advancing and progressing towards attaining

02:43the global objective of transiting into green energy with minimum social costs. That is essence.

02:50And then you network. I was talking about balancing the competing interests here,

02:55and looking at how Africa is structured. Fifty-four countries, they're working in silos there. But

03:01a lot has been said about Africa working with one voice to get the best outcomes in this area.

03:06Would you say we're seeing that traction play out in terms of how we're getting the Africans,

03:10African countries to collaborate, to have speaking with one voice, to have a much convening power

03:16globally? That's a very pertinent question, you know, and it's quite fortuitous because

03:23it was at this forum last year, January 2024, that we came in as African ministers of minerals,

03:34and I made a presentation on behalf of my country, Nigeria, with emphasis on local value addition,

03:41and other African ministers of minerals heard and became interested. And here, last year,

03:48we formed a group known as the African Mineral Strategy Group, AMSG. And the philosophy behind

03:56that is for us to speak with one voice because we have the same pressures, we have the same

04:02problems, we have the same interests, and it is, like you said, important for us to speak with one

04:09voice, to come together, because together we are stronger. We cannot be, you know, dissipated or

04:16dispersed at will, and so we will not give room for divide and rule anymore. So we are talking about

04:25uniformity in policy initiatives, uniformity in regulatory framework, so that if I say in my

04:35country, Nigeria, that without a concrete plan of local value addition, we are not going to give you

04:41license to mine. If there's another African country that does not have that regulation,

04:47investors can go there. But so when all of us are coming together under the banner of the African

04:53Mineral Strategy Group and speaking with one voice, it will be difficult for investors from

04:58any part of the globe to come to Africa and exploit us as they used to. Number two is the

05:04fact that for centuries, Africa had been the hewers of wood and the fetchers of water,

05:10and our minerals had always been exploited through what we call pit to port, which means

05:18they extract the minerals in the pit and then to port and ship out without local value addition,

05:28and they go to the rest of the world outside Africa and enjoy the value chain with the

05:34multiplier effect into the economies of those countries. So we said no under the auspices of

05:40the AMSG, and incidentally, I'm the chairman of the African Mineral Strategy Group, and so we said

05:45no. Henceforth, local value addition must be a primus inter pares in terms of policy uniformity

05:55throughout Africa, which means you don't only extract the minerals, you process locally

06:04through refinery and all of that to add value and then create a multiplier effect through employment,

06:12through local beneficiation and other benefits to Africa before you ship out. And in fact, we are

06:21saying that in lithium, for instance, lithium is now sought after globally for the production of

06:28electric vehicle batteries, for your telephone batteries and all that. So rather than taking

06:34our lithium away to somewhere, a factory in Europe contributing to the economy of that country,

06:40you must produce a battery in Africa. You create the employment locally and all that. So that is

06:46one of the benefits and very important one for our formation of the African Mineral Strategy Group,

06:53and this is made up of African ministers of minerals, and we are having our first anniversary

06:59here tomorrow because we formed it here last year, and that it's been going on, and I'm very,

07:04very happy because just this afternoon, Guinea came to me because 16 of us formed the group last

07:15year. More members are coming in, seeing the efficacy and efficiency of our terms and philosophy.

07:24I'd like to get to Nigeria's agenda and our priorities here, because when you look at how

07:30Nigeria is structured, yes, we still have challenges in terms of what we need to do.

07:34We need to be more strategic in certain areas. Human capital development, finding the expertise

07:37of people who can, you know, across the value chain, work in the critical space, in the critical

07:44mineral space is quite important, and I'd like to know what the national policy is, and what will

07:49be driving our engagements in all of this going forward. Actually, we are not so lacking in human

07:55capital development. We're not. What we lack, which is also, you know, symptomatic of Africa

08:04generally, is the technological capacity. We have one of the best trained people, engineers,

08:12geologists, you name it, anywhere in the world. When you go to these so-called developed countries

08:17of the world, you'll find Nigerians are the highest echelon of their technological

08:23installations or factories. So, we don't lack the human capacity. We lack the

08:29technological capacity in terms of having the technical, the top-end technical,

08:39the machinery, manufacturing of the machineries in Nigeria and in other parts of Africa, because

08:46at this point, as the chairman of the AMSG, I talk on behalf of Africa as a whole, because we all

08:51have the same problems. Africa lacks the technological capacity, but individually, we

08:58have experts who are sought after even in the developed societies. So, what we are doing is to

09:08look at strike deals with these developed societies. For instance, I was in the

09:15mines and money in London a month ago, and quite a number of companies approached me,

09:23and I sought some out after, I sought some too, who have demonstrable capacity for technological

09:32transfer to come to Nigeria, partner with us, or establish in Nigeria. And when they establish

09:39their projects and factories in Nigeria, Nigerians will be employed to work and understudy.

09:47And then, that is the way you do technological transfer over time. China did it, Taiwan did it,

09:54Korea did it, so why can't we do it in Nigeria and in Africa? So, that's it.

10:01On Nigeria's Minister of Solid Minerals there and Development,

10:04speaking on the African Minerals Strategy Group.

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