As demand for critical minerals continues to grow amid a global energy transition, Southern Africa’s abundance of minerals, including copper, cobalt and lithium, offers opportunities to establish industrial linkages across mining, processing, manufacturing and services.

The regional challenge, however, is translating mineral endowment into commercially competitive value chains that retain greater value, generate jobs and connect enterprises across member States in the Southern African Development Community (SADC).

The SADC Industrialisation Strategy and Roadmap 2015–2063, Regional Indicative Strategic Development Plan 2020–2030, Regional Mining Vision (RMV) and its Action Plan, and the Protocol on Mining provide a policy foundation for this ambition.

While the RMV’s Action Plan and project prefeasibility work have advanced elements of the agenda, uneven implementation of regional strategies, together with energy, logistics, skills, quality infrastructure, finance and regulatory constraints, continues to limit cross-border investment and beneficiation.

According to the SADC Business Council, the ongoing process to amend the SADC Protocol on Mining seeks to strengthen the regional framework and incorporate the RMV and private-sector perspectives.

Proposed amendments have undergone regional consultation and validation but are not yet in force.

This was discussed by speakers during the SADC Critical Minerals & Regional Value Chains webinar, held on October 13 by the SADC Business Council and Mining Industry Association of Southern Africa (MIASA).

The dialogue considered how these instruments can better connect mining with trade and industrial development, and how member States can pursue complementary rather than competing segments of mineral value chains.

The webinar participants also discussed practical measures to translate SADC’s mineral policy commitments into integrated, investable and market-ready regional value chains.

Speaking during the webinar, MIASA executive secretary and SADC Business Council member Vusi Mabena unpacked the role of public-private collaboration in driving value addition and beneficiation in the SADC region.

Mabena emphasised the importance of collaboration and fostering integration across the region in order to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by the critical mineral boom.

“We are talking about beneficiation and value addition – the region is actually [in] the best position and if we are not careful about how we handle this position, we will miss this boom. The region does not have much time left to make sure that all mining jurisdictions leverage on each other to benefit our economies and to grow,” he said.

Hence, Mabena stressed the urgency of capturing economic benefits through regional cooperation.

“We need to leverage on one another to grow the industry,” he added.

Mabena argued that the private mining sector needed to be supported by governments through legislation and policies that would promote investment in exploration and viable mining projects.

He thus highlighted the need to establish policies that encouraged investment in exploration.

“Our environments in our individual countries are not encouraging this investment, and it is therefore very important to sit down and reflect as a region on how are we going to review our policies and how are we going to reposition ourselves to make it easy for investors to come into our region.”

Mabena added that challenges in areas such as infrastructure and insufficient energy availability also needed to be addressed through collaboration between the private sector and government.

“The mining industry is ready to engage at an even faster pace than before to make sure that the mineral-based industrialisation leads to regional economic growth.”