By Adenike Lawal
A bold conversation about Africa’s future took center stage in Abuja today as over 1,000 stakeholders from across the globe gathered for the inaugural Africa Raw Materials Summit 2025.
Organized by the Raw Materials Research and Development Council (RMRDC), the three-day summit themed Shaping the Future of Africa’s Resource Landscape seeks to ignite a continental shift-from exporting raw materials to processing them for high-value economic growth.
At a pre-summit briefing, Professor Nnanyelugo Ike-Muonso, Director General of RMRDC, said Africa holds more than 30 percent of the world’s strategic raw materials yet remains stuck at the lowest rungs of the global value chain.
“Despite our immense resources, we are exporting jobs, innovation, and prosperity,” he said. “This must change. The time for Africa to move from extraction to transformation is now.”
The summit is set to explore themes like value addition, regional processing hubs, and alignment with the African Continental Free Trade Area.
Participants aim to commit to boosting local content and achieving at least 30 percent value addition in Africa’s raw material sector.
With key players from government, industry, research, and development finance institutions in attendance, the summit signals a major push to reposition Africa’s resource wealth as the backbone of sustainable industrial growth.
