External publications

Africa’s critical minerals for the energy transition: strategies of external powers and African agency

Matambo, Emmanuel / Phemelo Tamasiga
External Publications (2025)

in: Christine Hackenesch / Tobias Heidland / Denis M. Tull (eds.), Leverage and Limits: What African Actors Make of the new Multipolarity, Megatrends Afrika Working Paper 21, Berlin/Bonn/Kiel: SWP/IDOS/IfW, 36-40

Open access

The global rush for critical minerals has intensified amid a changing and complex world order. Multiple powers, including China and the United States, as well as the European Union (EU) and others, are vying for influence in Africa, which holds vast reserves of cobalt, lithium, rare earths, and other minerals essential for the clean energy transition. Demand for these resources is surging; for example, global lithium demand is expected to increase tenfold by 2050, driving billions in new mining investments, with Africa likely to attract a substantial share. African countries collectively hold around 30 per cent of the world’s known mineral reserves – including 70 per cent of global cobalt reserves, a metal crucial for batteries. Historically, African economies were trapped in a “primary commodity” model, exporting

raw materials under conditions shaped mainly by external powers, thereby limiting African agency and development.[...]

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