Africa’s diverse mineral resource has seen the continent emerge as a central supplier of key raw materials such as cobalt, lithium, graphite, and rare earth elements.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Rare earth elements are key components used in electric vehicles, renewable energy systems, and advanced electronics.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
However, the economic benefits are yet to be fully realised in most of these resource rich nations. Over the past few years, a growing number of governments on the continent have implemented restrictions on the export of unprocessed minerals in an effort to encourage local value addition and downstream investment.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Zimbabwe banned the export of raw lithium in 2022 and has already recorded significant Chinese-backed investment in local processing facilities<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The rising global demand for critical minerals has seen a new scramble for Africa taking place. The high demand for the continent’s rare earth elements has led to powerful nations like China pushing for more investments in the mining sector.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In Zimbabwe, Chinese-owned companies account for over half of Zimbabwe’s mining industry.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
But tension is brewing with several of the companies having been implicated for labour and rights abuses, displacement of local communities and environmental abuses.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
–SABC–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":14392,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[44],"class_list":["post-14391","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-finance","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Africa's diverse mineral resource has seen the continent emerge as a central supplier","published_date":"2025-11-03 10:48:44","news_description":"Africa's diverse mineral resource has seen the continent emerge as a central supplier","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/14391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/14391\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19072,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/14391\/revisions\/19072"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=14391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}