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Worldnews

Africa Doesnt Need Aid. It Needs Control Over Its Critical Minerals

African countries can break aid dependency by simply capturing the full value of their mineral resources. The decision of US President Donald Trump’s administration to suspend foreign aid and shut down the USAID agency has sent shockwaves across the development industry. In 2024, nearly a third of the $41bn in US foreign aid went to Africa, helping support various sectors from healthcare to education and sanitation. But as aid organisations sound alarm bells and government officials wring their hands over suspended programmes, we are missing the bigger picture: Africa’s continued dependence on foreign aid is a choice, not a necessity. Our continent sits atop some of the world’s largest reserves of the very minerals that will power the future, yet we remain trapped in cycles of aid dependency. It is time to change that. Let us be clear about what is at stake. The Democratic Republic of the Congo supplies 70 percent of the world’s cobalt – the essential ingredient in electric vehicle batteries. South Africa produces 75 percent of the world’s platinum and 50 percent of palladium. Mozambique and Madagascar possess some of the largest graphite deposits globally. Zimbabwe has the largest deposits of caesium, a critical metal used in GPS and 5G systems. More than just rocks and metals, these are the keys to the global clean energy transition. Every electric vehicle, solar panel, and wind turbine depends on minerals that Africa has in abundance. Yet here we are, still exporting raw materials like colonial-era vassals while begging for aid from the same countries that profit from our resources. The math is infuriating: We sell raw cobalt for $26-30 per kg (2.2lb), while battery-grade processed materials fetch $150-200. We’re giving away more than 80 percent of the value chain to foreign processors and manufacturers. This isn’t just bad business – it’s economic malpractice. The global battery market alone will reach $250bn by 2030. The renewable energy sector is growing at breakneck speed, with solar installations increasing 26 percent annually. Clearly, Africa’s mineral riches represent the greatest economic opportunity of our generation. But instead of positioning ourselves to capture this value, we are debating how to patch the holes left by suspended aid programmes. Critics will say we lack the infrastructure, expertise, and capital to process these minerals ourselves. They are right – for now. But this is precisely where we should be investing our resources and focusing our political will. The Chinese understood this decades ago, which is why they have poured nearly $58bn into securing control of critical mineral supply chains across Africa. They saw the future while we were busy filling out aid application forms. The solution is not complicated, though it is challenging. We need to build processing facilities, not just extraction sites. We need to establish special economic zones focused on mineral beneficiation, not merely export terminals. We need to invest in research and development facilities that can adapt and improve processing technologies. Most importantly, we need to think and act regionally. Imagine a Southern African Development Community Battery Materials Initiative, where countries pool resources and expertise to build integrated value chains. Picture an East African Rare Earth Elements Cooperation Framework that turns our mineral wealth into high-tech manufacturing capabilities. These are not pipe dreams – they are missed opportunities every day we continue business as usual. The environmental critics will say mining is dirty and destructive. They’re not wrong about the risks, but they’re wrong about the solution. The answer isn’t to leave our minerals in the ground; it’s to set our own high standards for sustainable extraction and processing. We can build a mining and processing industry that protects our environment and benefits our communities. We must, because the alternative is watching foreign companies do it their way while we deal with the consequences. The aid suspension has created human suffering that cannot be ignored. HIV treatment programmes, educational initiatives, and food security projects are all at risk. But if these programmes are essential – and many of them are – why should we depend on the political whims of foreign governments to fund them? Our minerals would pay for these programmes many times over once we capture their full value. What we need now is political courage and unity of purpose. We need leaders who can look beyond the next election cycle and envision an Africa that finances its own development. We need business leaders who can build processing facilities instead of export terminals. We need educational institutions that train chemical engineers and metallurgists instead of aid programme administrators. The current crisis must serve as our catalyst for transformation. Every suspended aid dollar should drive us to capture tenfold value from our minerals, and every diplomatic slight should strengthen our resolve to build African solutions. The choice is clear: We can spend the coming decades haggling over aid budgets, or we can finally take control of our destiny through the strategic development of our mineral wealth. It’s time for Africa to transform from the world’s raw materials store into its manufacturing powerhouse. By turning our mineral wealth into lasting prosperity, we can make foreign aid what it should have been all along: unnecessary. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance. 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Futbol

Who Makes Your England World Cup Starting XI?

It is two wins out of two for England in World Cup qualifying to begin the Thomas Tuchel era. But what did you think of the teams the German head coach selected against Albania and Latvia? If you were picking an England team tomorrow and everyone was fit, would you go for a Tuchel XI - or do things differently? Is Myles Lewis-Skelly now the first-choice left-back? Who would play on the wings? Pick your XI below and share it with your friends.

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News_Naija

How Wande Abimbola Rejected IBBs ING Bait, And Other Stories (3)

Abimbola’s eyes had seen 999 battles; so, one more battle would not make him go blind. Having survived a milestone of battles, it was natural for Abimbola to deploy his greatest weapon, Ifa, to prosecute the students’ battle that raged during his tenure as vice-chancellor of the University of Ife. The Babalawo’s eyes had seen many òkun (oceans) and countless òsà (lagoons), so he would not panic at the sight of isún (springs). Wande had fought many wars, yet he remained unbowed, standing on the rock of truth. In the military years of the 1980s, vice-chancellors of federal universities were statutorily entitled to a first term of four years and, if reappointed, got a three-year second term. In Abimbola’s seven years of vice-chancellorship (1982-1989), Great Ife witnessed giant strides, such as the purchase of a $1.2bn first-in-Africa accelerator for nuclear research energy and medicine—bought from France in 1986; the establishment of 23 linkages with various world-class citadels of knowledge, maintaining peace and tranquility among staff and students, and supporting teaching, research and development. “The university had a bank account in New York and an office in the UK, manned by whites. When an official of the university visited a university in the UK or our students went for exchange programmes, they—white officials employed by Ife—were the ones who saw to protocols, arranging for hotels, etc. It was a liaison office where those inquiring about our university could go and make inquiries. We had lots of money in the university’s accounts in the UK and New York City. “But, in line with a Federal Government directive that later emerged and forbade public institutions from running foreign accounts, Education Minister, Prof Jubril Aminu, said we should close down the account and all the money in the account was moved through the education ministry to the Federal Government’s account in 1986,” Abimbola said. In the same year, an external battle spilled over to Great Ife when Ife students, in solidarity with their Ahmadu Bello University colleagues, planned to embark on a protest called Ango-Must-Go. Agronomy expert, Prof Ango Abdullahi, was the vice-chancellor of ABU, whom protesting students accused of callousness, following an increase in school fees, among many other allegations. Abdullahi had reportedly invited the police to quell a peaceful protest, an authoritarian action, which some newspapers said resulted in the rape, maiming and killing of students and non-students by the police. A slew of Western press, including BBC, Voice of America, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, etc. reported in 1986 that many lives were lost to the ABU riot, with Nigerian newspapers lamenting, “Abdullahi expressed no regrets inviting the police,” and that he said, “only four people died.” Currently, Abdullahi is a Commander of the Order of the Niger and he holds the Magajin Rafin Zazzau traditional title. He is 86 years old. Abimbola said, “Higher institution students from all over the country had gathered in our university. They wanted to hold the mother of all rallies because some of their colleagues had been killed by the police in ABU, Zaria. “Security reports showed that the external students were in their thousands and had joined forces with our student population that numbered up to 30,000 because Moore Plantation, Ibadan; Adeyemi College of Education, Ondo; and the Institute of Agriculture, Akure, were part of UNIFE then. “The students were charging themselves up all through the night, singing, dancing and drinking, preparatory to a grand protest the next morning. The fear of the unknown gripped the university community because nobody could predict what the external students could do, but we know our students were not destructive. “I consulted Ifa, and Ifa told me what to do. In the middle of the night called óru ògànjó, I did what Ifa told me to do. Subsequently, loud and strange sounds reverberated through the university, sending shivers down the spines of the students who stopped singing and dancing, with the foreign students fleeing the campus as early as 5 a.m., while our students ceased all protest activities and went back to class. I am a lover of freedom of expression and association, but I could not leave the university community at the mercy of the foreign students, who could have wreaked havoc because they did not know the Ife tradition of protest.” So, I asked Awise Agbaye if African traditional bulletproof could stop AK-47 bullets. “No, it cannot,” Abimbola said. Abimbola’s response was in tandem with the answer given by the Araba of Osogbo, Chief Ifayemi Elebuibon, whom I had asked the same question some time ago. In my article, “Can African bulletproof stop AK-47 bullets?”, published in The PUNCH, on January 18, 2021, a former Military Administrator of Lagos State, Brigadier-General Olagunsoye Oyinlola, said no African traditional bulletproof can stop bullets from an AK-47 rifle, a position that pan-Yoruba activist, Sunday Adeyemo, aka Sunday Igboho, opposed, saying he had ‘authentic’ African traditional bulletproof that could stop AK-47 bullets. The Ooni, Oba Adeyeye Ogunwusi, also said in a telephone interview with me that ‘ayeta’ could stop bullets from an AK-47. However, Oyinlola, who fought in the Chadian crisis of the 1980s and led Nigeria’s contingent to the United Nations’ peacekeeping mission in Somalia in the early 1990s, said, “In the dane guns that masqueraders use in deceiving people, it is the gunpowder in them that explodes; they have removed the balls in the guns. As for soldiers missing their target when shooting at armed robbers tied to stakes, you must realise that it is not easy to kill a fellow human being. “Some of the soldiers are newly recruited. Some shut their eyes and shoot up. There was a time that the officer commanding the shooting had to kick out one of the soldiers because he was closing his eyes and shooting up. If it was ‘ayeta’ that made bullets not penetrate the robbers’ bodies initially, why did they die eventually?” Despite being armed, Sunday Igboho and some of his men fled when the democratic dictatorship of former President Muhammadu Buhari sent AK47-wielding killers in DSS uniform after him in his Ibadan home at night, following his strident condemnation of the widespread killing of Yoruba farmers by Fulani herdsmen in the South-West. One of Igboho’s men, who had charms all over his body, was killed and his corpse taken away by the killer DSS men. In an interview with me, Abimbola recalled that French soldiers cut off the charmed bracelets, amulets, gourds and cowries that Nigerian volunteers to WW1 had on their bodies. Recounting how his father enlisted in WW1, Abimbola said, “ My father was playing ‘ayò olópón’ with six others in Oyo when the town crier came and announced the war. From the ayò game, they all voluntarily went to the palace and were enlisted to fight on the side of France in Cameroon between 1914 and 1916. This was when European allied forces were fighting Germany and taking over Germany-colonised territories worldwide during the fallout of WW1. Germany had colonised portions of Cameroon, which France took over during the war. “The coalition took back all the African territories controlled by Germany. The countries include Tanganyika, now Tanzania, Rwanda/Burundi, Namibia, Cameroon and Togo. When I went to France in 1986 to purchase the accelerator, I told French authorities that my father fought on the side of France during WW1, they collected my father’s name, and the next day, they came and told me it was true, saying I could apply for French citizenship on account of my father’s participation in the war. But I did not. “It was my grandfather, Akinsilola, nicknamed Légbejúre (fàdá owó è pa ìjàkùmò), who led Oyo warriors to Ijaye, while Ogunmola led Ibadan warriors to Ijaye during the Ijaye War, and both forces levelled Ijaye. The late Alaaafin, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi, used to recite the panegyrics of the Oyo warriors who went to the Ijaye War, affirming my grandfather’s leadership of the Oyo forces. Unfortunately, I did not document the late Alaafin’s account.” When the Nigerian Civil War broke out, Abimbola’s father and his younger brother, who also fought in the WW1, urged Abimbola to enlist for the war. “I wished to go. But I was writing my PhD thesis then. If I had completed my PhD, maybe I would have gone to the civil war,” he said. Extolling moderation, humility, contentment and truth as virtues for longevity, Abimbola said he rejected plots of land someone gifted him in Lagos when he was VC, adding that the only house he owned was his father’s house in Oyo, which he remodelled as advised by his father. Abimbola, who has 17 children, including three sets of twins, revealed that he never attained the only position he struggled to get, which was the governorship of Oyo State. “1975 was the last time I drove a car. As VC, I had a total of five cooks and stewards, and there were 18 vehicles in the fleet, including a Peugeot 504 and two Mercedes-Benzes. I never rode the Mercedes-Benz because I knew I could not maintain such a lifestyle after my tenure. I only rode the Peugeot. The 18-car fleet was for the operation of our linkages, too,” Awise said.

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Worldnews

Trump Live News: WTO Warns US Tariffs Could Cut World Trade By 1.5 Percent

Chinese president continues Southeast Asia tour as WTO warns of ‘severe downside risks’ of Trump tariffs. Follow Al Jazeera English:...