This latest CCG Policy Brief is written by Vivien Foster, Karla Cervantes Barron, Raghav Pant, Baptiste Andrieu, Mehrnoosh Heydari, Alexandros Korkovelos, Simone Osei-Owusu, Samira Barzin, Metehan Ciftci, Martin Stringer, Camilo Ramirez Gomez, Gretel Cuevas Verdin, Adam Hawkes, Jim W Hall and Jonathan M Cullen.
Demand for critical (or energy transition) minerals is accelerating due to the clean energy transition. Southern Africa holds significant reserves of cobalt, copper, lithium, graphite, manganese, and nickel that are critical for battery manufacture. Yet, Africa mainly participates upstream in the supply chains for clean energy technologies. In recent years, African countries and regional institutions have expressed growing aspirations to increase value addition for battery minerals on the continent.
To date, there have been limited data and modelling tools to support policy and investment decisions on critical mineral value addition in Southern Africa. CCG’s new Policy Brief Beyond Extraction: Simulating Increased Battery Mineral Value Addition in Southern Africa reports simulations of alternative mineral processing futures and explores their implications for mining production, processing activities, export revenues, energy and transport infrastructure demands and environmentally sensitive areas.
Simulations identify significant potential to increase net export revenues by diversifying mining activities and moving up the value chain into processing, particularly where there is regional cooperation. However, a regional processing approach would heighten demand for transport and energy infrastructure in order to realise the resulting increased potential for mineral and metal processing in Southern Africa. Delivering a regional approach would also require overcoming political challenges to crossborder trade and benefit sharing. Under either scenario, environmental impacts across Southern Africa would approximately double relative to business-as-usual.
The new study draws on – and illustrates the capabilities of – a new geospatial data platform that brings together the best available information relevant to critical mineral mining and processing activity in the 14 countries of Southern Africa, including layers on mineral production, energy and transport infrastructure, and environmental features.
The platform could be extended to cover different policy targets, other value chains for the same minerals, other minerals for the same countries, and other countries in Africa or beyond.
CCG is open to opportunities for further collaboration with national and international partners interested in gaining further insights from the new geospatial platform.
Contact us for more information: Vivien Foster, v.foster@imperial.ac.uk or Karla Cervantes Barron, k.barron@imperial.ac.uk“
Read the policy brief here