Africa’s Critical Minerals Boom: How SADC Can Turn Energy Transition Resources into Industrial Growth

Africa’s critical-minerals endowment is placing the continent at the centre of the global energy transition, but Southern African leaders are facing a more consequential question than how much the region can extract: whether it can capture a larger share of the value created from those resources. As the Southern African Development Community (SADC) convenes its 46th Ordinary Summit in Durban on August 17, 2026, under a theme centred on resilient, sustainable and inclusive industrialisation, critical minerals transformation has moved closer to the centre of the region’s economic strategy.