President Bola Tinubu is expected to lead a new continental effort to prevent Africa’s mineral wealth from leaving the continent primarily as raw materials when he chairs a high-level summit on critical minerals in New York next month.
The summit, organized by the Africa Minerals Strategy Group, will convene in Manhattan on September 21, 2026, on the sidelines of the 81st UN General Assembly session.
Serving as the Third High-Level Roundtable on Critical Minerals Development in Africa, the meeting will be chaired by Tinubu in his capacity as AMSG General Assembly Chairman. The event is expected to gather African leaders, government officials, ministers, international investors, development finance institutions, multilateral organizations, and executives from the mining, technology, and logistics sectors.
A statement issued by AMSG on Sunday said the summit, themed “From Resources to Wealth: Continental Cooperation for Mineral Value Addition,” comes as major economies intensify the search for secure supplies of minerals required for electric vehicles, renewable energy, advanced manufacturing, artificial intelligence, digital infrastructure and defence technologies.
Africa possesses substantial reserves of key minerals, including lithium, copper, cobalt, graphite, manganese, and rare earth elements.
Historically, however, the continent has exported a significant portion of its mineral resources in raw or minimally processed forms, leaving external regions to capture the higher economic value generated by refining, manufacturing, and end-product creation.
According to the AMSG, the Africa Minerals Summit in New York aims to reverse this pattern by urging African nations to enhance local processing, expand domestic manufacturing, and further integrate their internal mineral value chains.
Africa Minerals Summit- Expectations
The summit will also mark the next phase of the Mutual Assured Development framework, which was launched earlier in 2026 during the African Natural Resources and Energy Investment Summit in Abuja.
During the New York gathering, African leaders and policymakers are expected to unveil the proposed Continental Integration and Economic Assurance Declaration, intended to provide a structured framework for cooperation on critical minerals.
The proposed declaration will focus on supply-chain security, domestic value addition, policy alignment, investor mobilization, and strategic initiatives designed to strengthen Africa’s bargaining power in the global resources market.
A central element of the initiative is the proposed CIEAD Finance Window, which aims to secure funding for mineral processing, infrastructure development, technology acquisition, and related investments required to build competitive value chains across Africa.
The meeting will be convened by the AMSG leadership, led by Dele Alake, Minister of Solid Minerals Development and Chairman of the AMSG Ministerial Steering Committee, alongside Moses Michael Engadu, the group’s Secretary-General.
Key participants are expected to include the Africa Finance Corporation, regional development finance institutions, multilateral organizations, and private sector leaders operating across mining, technology, mineral traceability, and logistics.
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