Afreximbank’s Awani Says Critical Minerals Pathway to Africa’s Devt

Stories by Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja

Executive Vice President, Intra African Trade and Export Development Bank, African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), Mrs. Kanayo Awani, has argued that Africa’s critical minerals are a major pathway to the continent’s industrial development and economic prosperity.

Awani spoke at the just concluded African Mining Indaba 2025 in Cape Town, South Africa on the theme, “Redefining Critical Minerals – Critical for Who?”.

A statement from the bank said Awani envisioned “a future where Africa’s mineral wealth empowers its people and drives sustainable development”.

She noted that while the continent abounded in mineral resources and accounted for about 30 per cent of all global mineral reserves, it had not benefited from those resources due to inadequate infrastructure, unclear national policy directions, environmental and social challenges, poor investment decisions and lack of financing.

“The paradox lies in the fact that whilst our continent is a treasure trove of resources, the benefits of these resources often flow outside our borders, leaving local communities and economies deprived,” she said. 

“For a continent that is endowed with such  vast  quantities of natural resources, the state of development across its length and breadth remains a puzzle,” she added.

Awani noted that many African countries currently extract minerals and export raw materials without substantial value addition, leaving the continent lingering at the lower rungs of global value chains and constraining economic benefits.

She argued that to fully tap into the new commercial opportunity, Africa needed to significantly increase investments in value addition and processing capacity so that countries could export finished or semi-finished goods, thereby enhancing the continent’s position in global value chains.

“Increasing investments in processing facilities and manufacturing plants can create thousands of jobs, which not only addresses unemployment but also builds a skilled workforce capable of engaging in diverse sectors,” she continued. 

“By investing in value addition, we can reduce our reliance on raw commodity exports and create a more resilient economy, better protected from the impact of fluctuating global market prices,” she stressed.

She said that Afreximbank had been a champion of many initiatives and transactions which presented opportunities to address some of the challenges faced by the continent’s mining industry, including the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA).

Here, she said the bank was a strategic partner to the AfCFTA Secretariat in establishing the $10 billion AfCFTA Adjustment Fund to which it had committed $1 billion and a matching grant of $10 million to seed its Base Fund.

The bank had also approved a $500 million concessionary finance window to supplement its critical development interventions to address the significant funding gap in Africa toward achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030,” she said.