As Nigerians await the report of the panel set up to investigate the circumstances that led to the avoidable death of 37 artisanal miners in Niger State, it has become imperative to examine the desperation for critical minerals by non-states actors and countries like China, EU, and the US. In doing so, it is also pertinent to understand why the minerals are “critical.” A publication of the Belfer Centre for Science and International Affairs reveals the three conditions stipulated by the U.S. Energy Act of 2020 that make a mineral to be termed critical. One, the mineral has to be “essential to economic or national security.” Two, “its supply chain is vulnerable to disruption,” and three, “it performs a function in manufacturing that cannot be replaced without serious consequences, whether higher costs for key technologies, slower deployment of clean energy, or risks to defense and communications systems.”
There is another dimension that further underlines the critical element. The geopolitics of where the mineral is mined can make it critical especially, “if it is refined or processed elsewhere, particularly by a strategic rival. An example of this is China’s dominance in rare earth refining,” the Belfer Center noted. Hence, China’s likelihood of withholding supply to gain advantage is a cause for worry.
Some of these critical minerals which are inextricably connected to global transition to clean energy, production of national defense gadgetsn and artificial intelligence data storage, include copper, cobalt, lithium, manganese, graphite, nickel, rare earth elements and platinum group metals (PGMs). And to follow the momentum, advanced nations continue to update their lists of critical minerals based on technological discoveries and growing appetite for them. Already, estimates by the International Energy Agency (IEA) as captured in Jordy Lee Calderon’s article in Milken Institute Review made a projection that the world “will require six times more mineral inputs for renewable technologies in 2040 than today,” just as the “Demand for lithium to manufacture rechargeable electricity storage, for example, is expected to increase at least 20-fold.”
In terms of global distribution, the highest reserves of critical minerals are unevenly spread across the leading nations of China, Australia, the Lithium Triangle region – (Chile, Argentina and Bolivia), Indonesia, as well as African countries like the Democratic of Congo (DRC), South Africa, Gabon, and Guinea. There are other countries in Africa including Nigeria that have significant deposits of critical minerals, but DRC alone has almost 75% of global cobalt reserves.
Meanwhile, with roughly 30% of global reserves of critical minerals, Africa is at the centre of strategic engagements for global supply, but unfortunately, the continent lacks the technical and technological capabilities to refine the minerals locally. What is therefore witnessed in the continent is mostly raw extraction for exports by artisanal miners, factions and fractions of criminal cartels of the elites, as well as some powerful officials in government who exploit the weak regulatory environment to rip off their countries. As such, the continent has inadvertently turned into battlegrounds for all manner of indigenous and external interests, with the mining sector morphing into a new rent-seeking frontier in Africa. The 80% control of critical minerals processing and refining by China has also awoken the U.S. from passivity. The irony, according to Calderon, is that it was the U.S. that “invented the complex industrial processes used for separating rare earth elements decades ago, then ceded production to China.” For years, the U.S. and some other industrialized nations looked down on mining and metals industry, and China dominated the space. But lately, the U.S. is poised to square up to China by extending its tentacles to African critical minerals sector. The U.S. and E.U. have brokered deals to secure supplies from Africa. And with Chinese companies already operating in some regions in Africa, including Nigeria, the battle may not be in the interest of the continent if they fail to act together.
The major challenge is that the mining sector in Africa is not strongly regulated amid the “new scramble”. Nigeria is still playing politics by pampering the big illegal miners who became billionaires overnight without verifiable economic production. Beyond that, Abraham Nunbogu and Kaveh Madani of Institute for Water, Environment and Health, United Nations University have raised concerns about creating “sacrifice zones” with the enormous amounts of water needed for minerals extraction and the health hazards in host communities in Africa and South America. They noted that, “In 2024 alone, global lithium production required an estimated 456 billion litres of water. That is equivalent to the annual domestic water needs of roughly 62 million people in sub‑Saharan Africa. At the same time, much of the world is facing water bankruptcy, meaning people and industries are using more fresh water than nature can replenish, leading to irrecoverable ecosystem damages.”
Besides, the communities close to the extraction sites have reportedly suffered “skin diseases, gastrointestinal illnesses, reproductive health problems and chronic health conditions associated with long‑term exposure to heavy metals in polluted water and soil…Evidence from mining regions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is particularly stark. Studies document high rates of miscarriages, congenital malformations and infant mortality among populations exposed to environments contaminated with cobalt and other metals,” as noted by Nunbogu and Madani. The mining communities in Nigeria are also having their sad tales.
Indeed, Nigeria and other African nations are not doing enough to stop industrialized nations from eating their lunch. And if care is not taken, the continent will relapse into another round of “resource curse.” Efforts should be made to ensure that the resource wealth is used in a sustainable manner by negotiating as a team under a continental platform instead of doing it by individual countries. Agreements should prioritise skills development, local content, and a clear-cut plan for closure of mining sites after exploration. Nigeria should understudy how Norway made its hydrocarbon resources work for the present and future generations. Let Nigeria avoid another environmental despoilation occasioned by mining without responsibility like the Niger Delta.