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Minerals, Leverage and the New Resource Diplomacy

Why beneficiation, not extraction, is the strategic question for Africa's critical-minerals endowment.

Resource diplomacy — cover

Africa holds a decisive share of the minerals on which the global energy transition depends. The strategic question is whether that endowment is exported as raw ore or converted into industrial value at home.

Beneficiation as leverage

Producer states are increasingly willing to condition access on local processing, technology transfer and equity participation. Coordinated continental standards would turn scattered bargaining into structural power.