Extractive sector stakeholders, policymakers, and advocates from across Anglophone Africa gathered in Accra for the 2026 Africa Regional Extractives Industries Knowledge Hub (AFREIKH) Summer School, facing a critical question: can the continent finally turn its critical mineral wealth into real development?

🇬🇭 Here's What Happened

Organized by the Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP) with support from the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI) and GIZ, the intensive one-week event launched amidst skyrocketing global demand for transition minerals like lithium, manganese, graphite, nickel and cobalt.

With the global energy transition underway, Africa stands at a historical turning point, one that could either repeat past resource failures or leapfrog the continent into a sustainable, industrialized future.

The summit opened with a blunt assessment of Africa's extractive history. Addressing the 3rd cohort of next-generation researchers, policy makers, and leaders, Benjamin Boakye, the Executive Director of ACEP, did not mince words about the legacy of crude oil and precious mineral exploitation.

📌 Key Details

"Across the African continent, crude oil exploration has generated enormous expectation but too often those expectations have not translated into development," Boakye stated. "We have seen revenues lost, institutions weakened and opportunities for economic transformation missed."

He added that in many countries, mining has frequently become associated with "environmental destruction" and local communities being left behind.

Rather than ignoring these past shortcomings, Boakye urged a collective reckoning to drive future reforms.

“We should perhaps embrace some shame collectively about this reality. But shame on its own will not change anything. We must turn that shame into determination; determination to learn from our mistakes; determination to bring strong institutions; determination to demand accountability; and above all, determination to think differently,” he emphasized.

According to him, the critical minerals lying beneath African soil must serve a higher purpose: "The resource beneath our soil should not be a curse; it should help us leapfrog development and create opportunities and address the poverty that threatens millions of Africans."

As global markets scramble for resources to power technological advancements, African leaders are demanding a structural shift away from raw export models.

📰 Source: Joy Online Ghana