Africa's Critical Minerals: The Strategic Opportunity for Private Equity
The blog post explores the paradox of declining global private equity (PE) investment in mining—dropping from $4.35 billion in Q1 2024 to just $152.8 million in Q1 2025—despite rising demand for critical minerals essential to the energy transition. It argues that Western investors are focusing on North America and Europe while largely overlooking Africa, which holds vast reserves of key minerals like cobalt, lithium, manganese, and rare earths. Countries like Zimbabwe, Zambia, Tanzania, and Namibia are not only rich in resources but are actively investing in value addition, industrial parks, and renewable energy corridors to support local processing—yet they remain underexplored and underfunded due to misconceptions about political risk, infrastructure challenges, and ESG viability.
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