At the recent UN Environmental Assembly on 28 February 2024, African countries passed a resolution calling for better controls and a fairer share of profits from the mining of transitional minerals crucial for building renewable energy technologies. Africa has large reserves of these minerals, and its leaders want to develop domestic processing industries to create jobs and economic growth. In an interview for The Guardian, Jean Marie Bope, a delegate from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, emphasised the need for a clean energy transition that doesn’t come at the expense of African economic growth and development: “Africa’s minerals are enough to power the clean energy transition, but we don’t want to do things how we have done them in the past.” They are calling for agreements that transfer skills and technology to enable this.
