By Martha Agas
Abuja, June 26, 2026
The Vice President of the African Development Bank (AfDB), Prof. Kevin Urama, has urged African countries to stop exporting raw resources.
Urama, who is also the bank’s Chief Economist, made the call on Thursday at the closing of the fifth African Natural Resources and Energy Summit (AFNIS) in Abuja.
He said Africa must create value from its natural resources to drive sustainable development and economic transformation.
The AfDB official urged countries to invest in development corridors linking mining, agriculture, industries and markets.
He said infrastructure should support industrialisation rather than focus mainly on exporting raw materials.
“We need to link up corridors that connect markets within Africa instead of building infrastructure mainly for extraction,” Urama said.
He noted that many transport corridors still reflected colonial-era extraction models rather than supporting regional value chains.
Urama also stressed the need to improve intra-African connectivity to reduce trade barriers and strengthen economic integration.
He said expensive travel between African countries continued to discourage commerce and cooperation.
According to him, Africa’s renewable energy resources, including solar, hydro, oil and gas, require greater regional collaboration.
The continent holds about 60 per cent of the world’s technical solar energy potential.
Urama said the resource remained largely untapped despite its capacity to support industrialisation and growth.
He cited the Inga Dam project in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sahara solar resources as opportunities.
He said such projects could transform Africa’s industrial landscape if countries worked together.
“Countries cannot achieve this alone. We need one Africa, one resource, working together,” he said.
Urama called for stronger local content policies to encourage African ownership of natural resource assets.
He urged countries to prioritise regional businesses in procurement and licensing processes.
He noted that China, South Korea and Singapore used local content policies to accelerate development.
“Local content policy is not new. These countries deployed it to move from developing economies to advanced nations,” he said.
The AfDB vice president advocated minerals development agreements instead of traditional mining concession agreements.
He said investors should be required to process and add value to minerals within Africa.
Urama added that local processing would create jobs, boost technology transfer and reduce emissions.
He said AfDB studies showed that processing critical minerals in Africa could lower production costs.
According to him, lithium-ion battery precursor production in Africa could cut costs by over 60 per cent.
He said developing mineral value chains would strengthen industrialisation and serve Africa’s 1.5 billion people.
Urama added that value creation would also support global efforts to tackle climate change.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the summit was themed, ‘One Africa, One Resource Vision’.
