Bala Wunti used the 2026 Concordia Annual Summit in New York to warn that Africa’s new mineral wealth, lithium, cobalt and uncommon earth parts, may simply repeat the errors of its crude oil technology. Why will have to any one pay attention?
One, as a result of Wunti spent 3 many years inside of Nigeria’s upstream oil sector, serving as Leader Upstream Funding Officer of NUIMS and managing director of NAPIMS and the Petroleum Merchandise Advertising Corporate. Those posts put him answerable for multibillion-dollar nationwide portfolios.
Two, Wunti led the renegotiation of Nigeria’s Deep Offshore Manufacturing Sharing Contracts, finishing a two-decade stalemate with global oil corporations and securing a bigger executive proportion of offshore earnings, an extraordinary case of translating useful resource wealth into measurable returns.
With that historical past in view, Wunti’s argument returns to center of attention.
In his opinion, exporting crude whilst uploading subtle petroleum creates poverty quite than prosperity; due to this fact, the similar development will have to now not outline how Africa handles its essential minerals.
For fifty years power was once priced in barrels, he stated; for the following 50, it is going to be priced in kilograms of lithium, cobalt, graphite and uncommon earth parts. World call for for battery minerals is emerging temporarily, and processing capability, now not uncooked deposits, is changing into the actual supply of financial merit.
Wunti additionally argued that Africa will have to turn out to be a processing spouse quite than stay a supply of uncooked subject material, calling the everlasting export of unrefined minerals colonial economics at the same time as he allowed that transient listen exports would possibly from time to time be commercially important.
Nigeria’s personal hole is instructive. By way of Wunti’s reasoning, the rustic has recognized 44 essential minerals, however geological indications don’t seem to be confirmed reserves subsidized by way of the world over recognised knowledge, and traders fund tasks, now not doable.