By: Shabir Ahmed - Chief Industry Advisor for Energy & Resources at SAP Africa

A clear message rang through the halls of the Cape Town International Convention Centre at this year’s Investing in African Mining Indaba: Africa’s mining sector holds enormous, untapped opportunity, but unlocking it will demand coordinated action across governments, investors, communities and the private sector.

That message landed at a pivotal moment. Renewable power capacity reached roughly 4 448 GW at the end of 2024, with solar, wind and hydropower accounting for about 40% of global electricity generation. More than 90% of new power capacity additions now come from renewables. Yet deployment rates still fall short of the COP28 goal to triple installed capacity to around 11 TW by 2030.

Behind every gigawatt of clean power sits a minerals story. Lithium demand is expected to increase fivefold by 2040. Cobalt demand is projected to rise by 50–60%, copper by around 30%, while graphite and nickel are set to at least double. Securing reliable, diversified supply chains for these materials has become a strategic priority for governments and corporates alike – and the geopolitical competition to secure them is intensifying.

Africa indispensable to energy transition

Africa sits at the heart of this equation. The continent holds about 30% of the world’s known reserves of key critical minerals. The Democratic Republic of Congo supplies over 70% of global cobalt. Zambia remains one of the world’s major copper producers. Zimbabwe has emerged as Africa’s leading lithium producer, while South Africa dominates global manganese output.

Little wonder, then, that the continent has become a focal point of geopolitical competition. The EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act, which entered into force in 2024, sets binding targets to diversify supply away from single-country dependence. The United States has committed over $4-billion to the Lobito Corridor connecting the DRC and Zambia to Angola’s Atlantic port, with total global investment now exceeding $6-billion. China, meanwhile, has stakes in fifteen of the DRC’s nineteen cobalt mines and continues to expand its Belt and Road footprint across the continent. For African producers, this convergence of competing interests creates both leverage and risk.

Yet this enormous potential is stunted by persistent constraints. Regulatory uncertainty, infrastructure deficits in power and transport, skills shortages, environmental pressures and illegal mining all heighten risk. Despite its resource base, Africa attracts less than 10% of global exploration spending.

Without policy coherence, infrastructure investment and transparent governance, Africa faces what might be called a “green resource curse”: exporting raw ore while importing finished technology and foregoing industrialisation. Consider that the DRC exports cobalt at a fraction of the price battery-grade cobalt hydroxide commands on world markets. Zimbabwe ships raw spodumene while lithium hydroxide, the processed product automakers actually need, is refined almost entirely in China. If the energy transition simply replicates old extractive patterns under a green label, Africa’s mineral wealth will once again benefit others more than its own citizens.

Coordination holds the key

Modern mining is no longer a purely extractive business. It is a data-driven, multi-stakeholder ecosystem that must integrate geological modelling, capital allocation, environmental performance, community engagement, logistics and global supply-chain compliance. Technology is the coordination fabric that links these moving parts.

Integrated digital platforms now give stakeholders a shared view of reserves, project timelines, ESG metrics and logistics flows. By reducing information asymmetry, they de-risk capital deployment and improve trust between miners, governments, development finance institutions and private investors. In an era where climate finance and transition-minerals funding depend on transparency, digital traceability is foundational.

Advanced analytics and AI are reshaping core mining processes. Digital twins allow operators to simulate mine design, production scenarios and environmental impacts before committing capital. Predictive maintenance reduces unplanned downtime and extends asset life. Across major operations, these tools are compressing exploration timelines and lifting productivity measurably.

Equally important for African producers seeking to move beyond raw exports is supply-chain integration. Digital commodity platforms that connect contracts, logistics, pricing and ESG attributes can help African refiners and processors demonstrate responsible sourcing at scale. This matters because the EU’s due-diligence requirements and the US Inflation Reduction Act increasingly reward traceable, locally processed minerals with green premiums and preferential market access. Technology thus becomes an enabler not just of efficiency, but of beneficiation and in-country value addition.

Meeting operational and ESG demands

Enterprise technology platforms such as those offered by SAP play a strategic role by providing the operational backbone across planning, asset management, procurement, logistics and ESG reporting. When a mid-tier miner can compress its sustainability reporting cycle from weeks to days, or a junior explorer can present investors with independently verified ESG data alongside geological assays, the conversation with capital markets shifts. Cloud ERP systems that integrate production data with financials in real time, embedded Business AI that flags maintenance risks before they become failures, and human capital management tools that track scarce skills and certifications all translate directly into bankability and investor confidence.

Crucially, the same platforms that manage production can also measure environmental and social impact. By combining operational and ESG data, mining companies can model emissions, water use and community outcomes and share evidence-based reporting with regulators and investors. In a capital-intensive sector where financing increasingly depends on sustainability credentials, this digital transparency becomes a competitive advantage.

Africa’s mining sector is therefore not just a supplier of transition minerals but a test case for how the energy transition can be aligned with industrial development. With the right policies, infrastructure corridors, skills programmes and digital coordination frameworks, critical minerals can underpin new refining capacity, regional value chains and millions of jobs.

The Indaba 2026 theme – “Stronger together: Progress through partnerships” – was well chosen. If Africa’s mineral potential remains constrained by fragmentation and mistrust, global decarbonisation will slow. If, however, stakeholders act in concert, using technology as the connective tissue and beneficiation as the organising principle, Africa can move from raw-materials exporter to central architect of the net-zero economy.