In a team debate to unpack opposing views, four experts – two for and two against – unpacked whether Africa is emerging a winner amid current geopolitical disruption.

Taking place on day one of this year’s Investing in African Mining Indaba in Cape Town, the debate was moderated by mining and metals advocacy group ICMM president and CEO Rohitesh Dhawan.

The experts argued their sides of the debate using what are known as “politicians’ rules”, Dhawan said, therefore, the views expressed by the participants were not necessarily their own or that of their company. “They are simply here to help us understand this issue,” he added at the time as a disclaimer.

London School of Economics visiting fellow and Signal Risk director Ronak Gopaldas and Center for Strategic and International Studies critical minerals security director Dr Gracelin Baskaran argued that Africa is not a winner, citing instability, lack of coordination and poor governance as major obstacles. They emphasised the need for predictability, pragmatism and partnerships. 

“In this current environment, Africa is more vulnerable than a certain CEO at a Coldplay concert,” quipped Gopaldas.

He used three songs to frame his argument. The first song in Gopaldas’s playlist was the Tears for Fears hit Everybody Wants to Rule the World.

“We are back to an era of great power competition. We know what mercantilist economics we’ve got, zero sum politics, multilateralism is framed. Trade has become securitised, and in this era, the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. So, it’s not about principles. It’s about power in the current environment.

“Unfortunately, Africa, from a size perspective, from a security perspective, from a governance and institutional perspective, is going to suffer, because, as the proverb goes: When two elephants fight, it’s the grass that suffers.”

However, Africa does not only have two elephants anymore. There are many elephants.  And considering Africa’s history – comprising colonialism, Cold War proxy theatres and the recent Covid-19 pandemic, where the continent was at the back of the vaccine queue – he advanced that Africa is going to be a rule taker rather than a rule maker.

“Our colleagues will probably argue now that [the current global climate] is actually going to create an opportunity, right? It’s going to create an environment where we can play these powers off against each other, which is great in theory, but to quote Bon Jovi, you can’t be living on a prayer.”

Leverage only comes from strength, and strength is a function of financial might, military might, institutional might, which Africa does not have. And the reality, said Gopaldas, is that Africa needs collective bargaining.

He continued to say that the uncomfortable truth is that Africa must, in the words of Michael Jackson, start with “the man in the mirror”. 

“We must take accountability. Because it’s easy to look at the environment and say that the rules are unfair and the system is written against us; I’ve got a lot of sympathy for that argument, but the reality is that nobody’s coming to save us.”

The opposition, Kumba Iron Ore CEO Mpumi Zikalala and TechMet CEO and chairperson Brian Menell, countered that Africa’s minerals endowment and young demographic provide significant opportunities. They highlighted ongoing partnerships and the potential for increased investment from global powers. 

“The world is at a pivotal point. There are multiple elements that are leading to the space in which we find ourselves in terms of uncertainty, saying that the world needs to realign.”

Looking at the facts, Zikalala firstly argued that Africa has a disproportionate critical minerals endowment coupled with long-term demand for these minerals.

However, Baskaran pushed back during her rebuttal, arguing that it is not just about being at the right geopolitical moment or having geology. It is about the third “G” – governance.

“If we don’t get the governance right, it doesn’t matter if the geopolitical environment is right,” she emphasised, adding that exploration really signifies long-term confidence in a mining jurisdiction.

Looking at exploration trends, Baskaran stated that Africa has gone from accounting for 16% of global exploration activity ten years ago to about 10% at present. But what is troubling, is what happens to exploration trends in areas with high geopolitical conflict.

“If you look at Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso, they have declined between 50% and 90% in recent years. Burkina alone, in the last two years has declined by 68.7% because companies are not seeing the stability of a jurisdiction where they would want to develop a project for 50 to 100 years. It doesn’t matter if geopolitics is in your favour, if there is instability.”

She then turned to resource nationalism, looking specifically at Tanzania and Zambia as examples of where mining companies have divested owing to unfavourable mining policies.

While Baskaran admitted that it was not, in principle, a problem to seek to get a larger share of benefits, she emphasised that countries still needed to encourage investor confidence.

“A lot of the conversation on the continent has turned to local beneficiation. It’s not a bad idea, it’s a good idea, but you need to think about what policies make that possible. For example, every country cannot build refining capability for every commodity. It’s not economical and at the end of the day, by and large, mining companies have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders.”

Baskaran emphasised the need to create regional integration, questioning whether the barriers between countries have been addressed to enable economies of scale by combining the copper or nickel from two or three countries. This is in addition to building the requisite energy infrastructure to power processing, which is extremely energy intensive.

She concluded by saying that Africa has phenomenal natural resources but whether it can benefit from the geopolitical moment will depend on if Africa can get the governance right. 

Zikalala believes that the multipolar space that Africa finds itself in creates optionality and is where the continent needs to start thinking differently about the element of dependence. While she lamented that many in Africa are in their “deal era”, there are those that are looking beyond the short term and considering long-term outcomes.  

Zikalala noted that the elements of infrastructure and capability are value levers that Africa can pull. 

“The key thing is, how does that essentially take place? What we do know is that there’s an opportunity, and we’ve seen some partnerships coming through. We think that more partnerships can be worked on and scaled up. We shouldn’t just think about the negatives. We need to look at the future opportunities and the fact that people have started working on these things.”

Menell joked that he did not have to pretend to be a politician to believe Africa is a winner. He said although they are very eloquent, Gopaldas and Baskaran are “very obviously wrong”.

“We are in a new Cold War era, dominated by competition between US and US-allies and China and China’s clients and allies. And in that new Cold War, one of the key fronts is control of resources. The world needs increasingly more of what Africa has to feed the energy transition, AI, data centres, robotics, defence industries, drones, autonomous driving systems and so forth.”

He explained that the power of control and ownership of these resources is growing, not declining, and the competition between the great powers in the new Cold War for these resources will inevitably result in more engagement, investment, development and wealth. 

Acknowledging that there are a lot of challenges in constructively reacting to this and doing it well, Menell stressed that regardless of those challenges it will happen, it is happening and it must happen. 

“The other thing Africa has that Mpumi alluded to, which is going to ensure that Africa is a winner in this new fragmented world of heightened conflict and transactional diplomacy, is the fact that we have youth.”

Zikalala had highlighted that Africa has the largest and the youngest skills force. Acknowledging that her opponents may argue that the skills base requires developing, she emphasised that this could be solved through training, especially “when you have the people”.

The continent also has a population of people who are tough and resilient and much tougher than the “woke, entitled, welfare state-addicted populations of Europe”, said Menell.

“Luckily, the US still has some tough people. European decline is going to need Africa more and more, and we will, therefore, be winners.”