President Bola Tinubu is set to lead a major African push to gain greater control over the continent’s mineral wealth as he chairs a high-level critical minerals summit in New York on September 21, 2026. The meeting, organised by the Africa Minerals Strategy Group, will take place on the sidelines of the 81st United Nations General Assembly and bring together African leaders, investors, financiers and major players in the mining and technology sectors.
The summit comes at a time when demand for critical minerals is soaring globally, driven by electric vehicles, renewable energy, artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing and defence technologies. Africa is home to huge deposits of valuable resources, including lithium, copper, cobalt, graphite, manganese and rare earth elements. Yet, for decades, much of the continent’s mineral wealth has been exported in raw or minimally processed form, allowing other countries to capture much of the value through refining, manufacturing and finished products.
Under the theme, “From Resources to Wealth: Continental Cooperation for Mineral Value Addition,” the meeting will focus on changing that long-standing pattern. The Africa Minerals Strategy Group wants African countries to move beyond the traditional extract-and-export model by developing local processing, stronger supply chains and manufacturing capacity. The goal is not simply to dig more minerals out of the ground, but to ensure the wealth generated from those resources creates more businesses, jobs, infrastructure and industrial opportunities within Africa.
A major proposal expected to take shape at the New York gathering is the Continental Integration and Economic Assurance Declaration, which will focus on policy coordination, investment mobilisation, local value addition and supply-chain security. The proposed CIEAD Finance Window is also expected to help attract funding for mineral processing, infrastructure and technology. With development finance institutions, private investors and companies expected at the summit, the organisers are hoping to move the conversation from ambitious policies to projects that can actually be financed and implemented.
For Africa, the stakes are bigger than the mineral trade itself. The continent has an opportunity to use its natural resources as a springboard for industrialisation, technology transfer, regional trade and job creation rather than remaining primarily a supplier of raw materials to the rest of the world. Tinubu’s role in the summit, alongside Nigeria’s growing focus on local mineral processing, places the country at the centre of a wider continental effort to ensure Africa does not simply supply the minerals powering the global economy, but also benefits from the industries and wealth they create.
source: punch
