The Director-General the Raw Materials Research and Development Council (RMRDC), Prof. Nnanyelugo Ike-Muonso, has called on Africa countries to move from its long-standing “pit-to-port” economic model to resource-based industrialisation.

Speaking during a news conference to herald the second edition of the Africa Raw Materials Summit (ARMS) in Abuja, Muonso further called on African countries to move beyond the export of unprocessed commodities and build manufacturing industries around the continent’s abundant natural resources.

The ARMS two-day summit is scheduled for October 19 to 20, 2026, at the Abuja Continental Hotel, Abuja, under the theme, “From African Feedstock to African Factories”.

Ike-Muonso said Africa had for decades exported its raw materials with limited processing and subsequently imported finished products at considerably higher costs.

According to him, the situation has continued to deprive African economies of jobs, industrial capacity, foreign exchange and opportunities for technological development.

He said, “The summit marks an inflection point where policy, capital, technology and political will align to ensure that what is extracted from African soil is transformed on African soil”.

Muonso-Ike disclosed that the summit would bring together policymakers, industrialists, investors, farmers, researchers, development partners and other stakeholders from across Africa and the global industrial community.

More than 1,800 delegates from the 54 African countries and global industrial partners are expected at the 2026 edition, representing a significant expansion from the maiden summit. The maiden edition of ARMS, held in 2025, attracted more than 1,000 participants and provided a platform for the unveiling of the Ten-Year Raw Materials Transformation Roadmap, covering 2025 to 2034.

He said the roadmap was designed to guide Nigeria and other stakeholders towards greater local processing, technological development, climate-resilient production and backward integration.

According to him, ARMS 2026 will build on that foundation by focusing on practical measures capable of connecting Africa’s raw material deposits to manufacturing plants.

He identified five major pillars for the summit: logistics and infrastructure, value addition, circular economy, AfCFTA regional value chains, and technology commercialisation and capital linkage.

On logistics, Ike-Muonso said the summit would address what he described as the “missing middle” between farms, mines and factories, including poor transport infrastructure, inadequate cold-chain systems, testing facilities and certification mechanisms.

He said improving these connections was essential to ensuring that agricultural and mineral resources could move efficiently from production sites to processing and manufacturing centres.

The second pillar, he explained, would focus on the proposed 30 per cent raw materials value-addition mandate being championed by the RMRDC.

The proposed amendment to the RMRDC Act seeks to require a minimum of 30% local value addition to Nigerian raw materials before export. The bill has passed legislative stages and is listed by the Council as awaiting presidential assent.

Ike-Muonso said the measure was intended to strengthen domestic processing and manufacturing, create jobs, conserve foreign exchange and increase the contribution of manufacturing to the Nigerian economy.

He, however, noted that industrialisation could not depend solely on primary extraction, stressing the importance of developing a circular economy in which agricultural waste, mine tailings, scrap metals and other industrial by-products were converted into useful inputs for secondary production.

The summit will also examine the African Continental Free Trade Area and its potential to facilitate regional value chains, allowing processed raw materials from one African country to serve manufacturing industries in another.

Ike-Muonso said the continent needed to move towards a situation where “Made in Africa” products were genuinely “Sourced in Africa,” rather than depending heavily on raw materials and industrial inputs from outside the continent.

The fifth pillar, technology commercialisation and capital linkage, will focus on connecting research institutions and innovators with investors, development finance institutions and industrial off-takers.

According to the D-G, ARMS 2026 will provide opportunities for researchers and innovators to move technologies from laboratories into commercial production through investment, technology transfer and business-to-business engagements.