Miningweb: WEF urges global investment in Southern Africa’s critical minerals to power energy transition

Key topics:WEF urges global investment to unlock Southern Africa’s mineral wealth.Region holds 30% of key clean-energy mineral reserves.Policy, infrastructure and energy gaps hinder exploration and growth.Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..By Kerry Lanaghan.Southern Africa's vast reserves of critical minerals essential to clean energy technologies remain largely untapped due to persistent financing and policy barriers, according to a new World Economic Forum (WEF) report. Released in Johannesburg on 29 August 2025, Securing Minerals for the Energy Transition: Finance for Southern Africa highlights the urgent need to attract global capital to unlock the region's mineral wealth and meet surging worldwide demand for low-carbon technologies.Produced in partnership with the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) and McKinsey & Company, the report examines ten key countries: Angola, Botswana, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Madagascar, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Sub-Saharan Africa holds nearly 30% of known global reserves of minerals vital to renewable energy and battery technologies, including copper, cobalt, lithium, manganese and platinum-group metals. Yet Africa draws less than 10% of global exploration spending, revealing a stark mismatch between potential and investment flows."Southern Africa has the mineral reserves the global energy transition urgently needs, but finance flows are not keeping pace," said Jörgen Sandström, Head of Transforming Industrial Ecosystems at the WEF. DBSA chief executive Boitumelo Mosako warned that unless the continent breaks with historical extraction models, it risks missing the chance to translate mineral wealth into broad socio-economic transformation.The study identifies eight key financing barriers holding back the region: policy uncertainty, investment risk, limited energy access, poor transportation links, lagging innovation, slow industrialisation, skills shortages and volatile global demand. To overcome these obstacles, the report highlights scalable local success stories that demonstrate how infrastructure upgrades, regulatory reform and green technology can attract global capital while delivering inclusive growth.Notable examples include the Lobito Corridor, a multinational railway project linking Zambia and the DRC to Angola's Port of Lobito to ease export bottlenecks; Namibia's green iron initiative, Africa's first industrial-scale zero-emissions iron plant powered by renewables and green hydrogen; and Zambia's mining policy reform, which has already boosted investor confidence and aims to triple copper production by 2031.The WEF has called on international investors, governments and development finance institutions to replicate such models to secure critical mineral supply chains and strengthen global energy security. "Sustainably unlocking this potential will be critical to both regional prosperity and the world's clean energy future," the report concludes.The full report from the WEF can be read here.

Miningweb: WEF urges global investment in Southern Africa’s critical minerals to power energy transition

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