Ramokgopa warned that the continent’s mineral wealth and industrial potential will mean little without integrated planning, coordinated investment and reliable energy systems.
Speaking at the opening of the three-day 2026 Energy Indaba in Cape Town on Tuesday, Ramokgopa told delegates from government, finance, and civil society that Africa is indispensable to the world’s shift toward cleaner energy technologies.
“In this reconfigured world, Africa is not a peripheral actor. Africa is a structural anchor in the global transition,” he said. “Without African platinum group metals, the hydrogen economy cannot achieve scale. Without African cobalt, manganese and copper, the battery revolution alters. Without African vanadium, long‑duration storage remains constrained.”
Ramokgopa stressed that mineral endowment alone is not enough to drive transformation. He said Africa must build the systems, infrastructure and industrial capacity required to turn raw materials into value‑added products.
“A battery precursor facility cannot operate on an intermittent supply. Green steel production depends on stable hydrogen and firm baseload capacity. Electrolysers require grid resilience, and advanced manufacturing demands quality, predictability and scale,” he said. “Minerals without energy do not become industry. Industry without transmission does not become exports.”
Ramokgopa argued that Africa’s energy future cannot be shaped through fragmented decision‑making. “Transformation cannot be advanced through isolated engagement. It requires coordination across power pools, harmonised regulatory frameworks, credible project pipelines and sustained dialogue between sovereign actors and institutional capital,” he said.
He described the Energy Indaba as a platform that must “serve as a catalyst for transactions, not only discussion”, bringing together integrated resource plans, development finance institutions, transmission‑expansion strategies and infrastructure investors.
As the African Continental Free Trade Area expands intra‑African trade, Ramokgopa said regional energy integration will become the backbone of industrial corridors, manufacturing clusters, mineral‑processing zones, hydrogen hubs and digital economies. “Energy planning and trade integration must move together,” he said. “Africa’s opportunity lies not only in what we extract, but in what we build.”
–ChannelAfrica–
