As global powers and the tech industry compete for African minerals, the continent needs tech diplomats to negotiate fairer deals.
Thirty percent of the world’s critical minerals come from Africa, and their access is a priority for South Africa’s government during its G20 presidency this year. The issue is expected to be a key discussion point at the group’s Johannesburg summit in November.
Does the tech industry, which represents much of the demand for critical minerals, have a role to play in ensuring fairness? After all, minerals like copper, cobalt, coltan, lithium and silicon power the intelligent and electrified systems of the future.
Coltan is used to build capacitators in cellphones, computers and cameras, and lithium batteries power e-vehicles. Minerals such as platinum are used to produce high-resolution displays for smartphones, tablets and computers, and South Africa holds 80% of global reserves.
At the June ITWeb Security Summit 2025 in Johannesburg, which attracted the biggest names in the tech sector, ISS Today sought experts’ views on what role the industry should play in the African minerals debate. This matters because critical minerals are not simply a raw material for technology products, but a catalyst for industrialisation and fairer terms of trade with resource-rich countries.
Some forecasts say global tech spending will reach US$11.47 trillion by 2026, and is increasing. Yet most of the value from critical minerals is derived from outside the countries where they are sourced.
South Africa is committed to developing a critical minerals framework to enable source countries to set up their own value chains, like local processing. This would result in what President Cyril Ramaphosa described at January’s Davos World Economic Forum as an ‘additive rather than an extractive relationship,’ and would help stimulate economic growth.
Cyber Security Institute training lead Noelle van der Waag-Cowling is worried that Africa is caught up in a critical minerals ‘arms race’. Two interlinked issues concern her: resource access and Africa’s technological dependence.
Africa needs agency in negotiating access to critical minerals, she argues, suggesting that any deals could be linked to ‘assisting the … continent develop its IT infrastructure.’ With the promise of artificial intelligence (AI) and digitising government services, the continent needs storage capacity.
Deals could essentially be framed as ‘come and build us some amazing AI-driven data centres (networked computer servers that store, process and distribute large amounts of data) and let’s see what we can do for mutual benefit,’ she says.
As well as resource access, ‘we have critical dependencies on foreign tech, which leaves the continent … vulnerable to being used as leverage by global powers,’ says Van der Waag-Cowling. She cited the US-Ukraine critical minerals deal or the US move to ban Chinese computer chips used to manufacture, among others, advanced weapons systems. In response, China banned rare earth minerals exports to the US.
That is why Africa should negotiate hard to get returns from its large critical minerals deposits and its dependency on foreign tech companies such as IBM and Microsoft. ‘Can you imagine not having access to the technologies on which 98% of us depend?’ Technology and the minerals that underpin it are important geopolitical tools and ‘what we are looking at is actually a low-level form of conflict,’ she warns.
In addition to the environmental and human rights impact, which organisations such as RAID highlight, there are growing concerns about minerals for security deals in Africa. In June, the US government helped secure a peace deal in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), enabling US access to lithium minerals in return for military assistance against the M23 rebels.
It is unclear whether such transactional conflict management can address a conflict that has claimed thousands of lives and left hundreds of thousands in eastern DRC homeless.
While for tech companies, the source of their African raw materials may be remote, they should play a role in ensuring equity and fairness. The clothing industry’s sensitivity to sweatshops in Bangladesh serves as a salutary warning about damage to brand reputation when you are associated with unfair practices.
Furthermore, the tech and minerals industries are becoming blended. The Financial Times reports that the Bill Gates-backed KoBold Metals is watching the US-DRC deal closely. KoBold, industry insiders explain, uses AI ‘to collect and analyse multiple data streams – from old drilling results to satellite imagery – to better understand where new deposits might be found.’
Such technological innovations could be used to benefit Africa more broadly – the kind of quid pro quo arrangement Van der Waag-Cowling alludes to above – along with tech knowledge exchange to boost local supply chains.
Another way the global technology sector can help is by ensuring that as mining in Africa becomes digitised, enterprises are protected from digital intrusions, argues Africa Cyber Defense Forum leader Gilbert Nyandeje. ‘Big tech companies can leverage their deep expertise in areas like cybersecurity to protect critical minerals supply chains from cyberattacks that could sabotage operational security.’
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The extractive sector is not immune to cyberattacks. Nyandeje points out that the 2020 SolarWinds hack was one of the biggest assaults on global supply chains ever, with many mining companies affected. He says big tech companies should also help ‘champion more fair deals for Africa’ as part of their corporate social responsibility commitments.
With the global race to secure critical minerals and the economic, moral and geopolitical considerations, many industry experts believe Africa should consider developing a cadre of technology ambassadors. Denmark and France have appointed such envoys to ensure their national interests and values are reflected in this domain.
Cyber diplomacy is a related and emerging field largely focused on how states interact in cyberspace. However, tech diplomacy is a different sphere of influence, with much of the power lying in the private sector.
With big technology firms increasingly being compared to nation states, Africa’s G20 representatives should raise the issue of power dynamics between the continent’s critical minerals suppliers and tech customers in the richer world. To date, Van der Waag-Cowling laments, ‘Africa has not had those discussions at all.’
Karen Allen, Consultant, ISS Pretoria