A country’s possession of critical minerals in the ground does not automatically guarantee an ability to set up a globally competitive value chain that creates industrialisation, jobs and economic wealth. Across the world, different countries and regions are trying various policy experiments, whether around resource nationalism or liberalisation, to determine how to access the critical minerals needed to create the clean energy technologies of tomorrow. BloombergNEF’s Energy Transitions Investment Trends 2023 report shows that growing policy support and the increasing competitiveness of clean energy technologies is underpinning a rapid acceleration of the energy transition. The more recent IEA World Energy Outlook describes global energy systems in 2030 in which clean energy technologies play a vastly greater role than they do today. Critical minerals aren’t automatically exploitable for battery value chainsSpeaking at a critical minerals Africa event in Cape Town, Dr Kwasi Ampofo, head of metals and mining at BloombergNEF mentioned the five things he thinks Africa needs to do to set up critical minerals value chains.

Source: The North Africa Journal October 30, 2023 10:47 UTC