Call for Africa to turn fragmented mineral belts into coherent regional value chains

Africa does not have the luxury of treating regional cooperation and regional beneficiation as afterthoughts. If the continent continues to negotiate in small, fragmented units, the result will be a patchwork of export restrictions and incentive schemes that strain investor confidence without building the connective tissue of shared infrastructure and industrial capacity. If, instead, leaders use projects such as the Lobito Corridor as prototypes for how to align geology, logistics, and industrial policy at a regional scale, the continent can begin to shape global value chains rather than simply feeding into them.