Africa: Time for resource nationalism 

Addressing the 78th General Assembly of the United Nations recently, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu hit the nail on the head on the new scramble for raw materials in Africa by the West to the disadvantage and poverty entrenchment of African countries. He called on “global solidarity to secure the continent’s mineral-rich areas from pilfering and conflict… as Africans are asking whether this conflict in mineral-rich areas on the continent is by accident or design…

“Member nations must reply by working with us to deter their firms and nationals from this 21st-century pillage of the continent’s riches …, “ Tinubu affirmed.

But the   West, analysts say, will not help Africa deter their firms from pillaging the continent’s resources because they desperately need those resources to build a low-carbon economy under the current climate change. And they must get them by all means, including using terrorists to destabilise recalcitrant African nations.

According to energy experts, to keep global warming under 2 degrees Celsius, graphite, lithium, and cobalt production will need to rise more than 450 percent by 2050 from 2018 levels, and that is just to meet demand from energy storage technologies.

By 2030, reports affirm that at least 300 mines in Africa for materials like cobalt, copper, graphite, lithium, nickel, rare earth elements (RREs) and vanadium will need to be brought on stream in Africa because of concerns about potential supply shortages that could cause severe consequences across the global economy.

However, despite the fact that these minerals, including oil and gas, play pivotal economic role in African nations,majority of its citizens still wallow in abject poverty. Their average incomes persistently lag behind the global average because of their reliance on raw material exports and rent income.

The oil sector exemplifies Africa’s predicament. In Angola, for instance, oil constitutes 90 percent of its exports, and approximately three quarter of the government revenue come from it. But the oil money tend to be monopolised by a select few, rarely benefitting the broader population. Even when the oil and gas revenues ostensibly reach government coffers, they frequently vanish. A 2011 audit by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) revealed that Angola lost $32 billion between 2007 and 2010 to corruption, roughly a quarter of the country’s total revenues for that period.

In Nigeria, about 400,000 barrels of crude oil are reportedly stolen per day in the Niger Delta with the alleged support of some multinational oil firms in the region that has two-thirds of the country’s oil reserves.  Since the end of Nigeria’s civil war in 1970, control over the source of 80 per cent of Nigeria’s revenue from crude exports became a vital concern of elite factions in Nigeria’s neocolonial economy.

The West has been promoting a neocolonial model of exploiting resources of developing states of the African continent. Neocolonialism involves a coordinated effort by former colonial powers and their alliesto blockgrowth in developing countries and retain them as sources of cheap raw materials and cheap labour.

Tinubu said as much when he pointed out that ‘Africa’s economic structures have been skewed to impede development, industrial expansion, job creation, and equitable distribution of wealth.’

This parasitic relationship provides increased wealth and power to the multinational extractive companies, who, in collaboration with local bourgeoisie in Africa, continue to perpetuate the exploitation of the people and the state.

There is need now for   African governments, for strategic and economic reasons, to strengthen the continent’s resource nationalism – the control and promotion of local processing of their   natural resources. And capitalise on the growing global demand for their mineral resources by   forming regional and global commodity associations on the model of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries(OPEC) without the participation of the West.

Bringing the West on board, analysts say, would make the stability of African ruling elites dependent on fulfilment of the West demands for raw materials, and respect for the interests of Washington and the European Union (EU).

Already in anticipation of raw material challenges to build materials the West needs to build a low-carbon economy, the EU has   enacted    the   Critical Raw Materials (CRM) Act 2023, and the United Kingdom (UK) has endorsed the Critical Materials Strategy (CMS) 2022/2023 to address supply vulnerabilities crucial for their economies as they cannot guarantee supply security from African producers in a globally competitive market.

Interestingly, they are only aiming to strengthen the relationship between Europe and Africa, as primary raw material exporters without shifts in their political, diplomatic, and commercial relations needed to support Africa’s value addition and beneficiation. It is now clear that the promised financial benefits from the EU Global Gateway for Africa won’t be forthcoming, as allocated funds will focus on export infrastructure to serve their interests.

This fits into the predatory attitude of the United States (U.S.) and its allies towards the extraction of critically important minerals in developing countries, while refusing to develop the same resources at home for environmental reasons which could lead to discontent among the local population in the context of such actions by the West. Analysts say the EU and the U.S. are not interested in local processing of minerals since their priority is to build high-tech industries exclusively in their countries.

African leaders, while participating in multilateral partnerships, should now be prepared to heighten their export controls and restrictions on their critical minerals in order, as Tinubu said, “not to replace old shackles with new ones.’’

• Awuru writes from Minna