The maiden edition of the Africa Raw Material Summit 2025 set to commence on Tuesday, May 20- through Thursday 22, 2025 is expected to produce key outcomes including raw materials industrialisation and 30 percent value addition in African resources.

Nnanyelugi Ike-Muonso, director general/CEO Raw Materials Research and Development Council (RMRDC) Federal Ministry of Innovation, Science and Technology (FMIST) said the summit, which is the first of its kind in the agency, is expected to host over 1000 participants from across Nigeria and the continent.

“Africa is abundantly endowed with over 30 percent of the world’s strategic raw materials—ranging from agricultural produce to critical minerals such as lithium, cobalt, graphite, and rare earth elements lamented that paradoxically,” the DG said while briefing journalists at a pre-event briefing in Abuja on Thursday. ”

He noted that African economies continue to operate at the lower levels of global value chains due to excessive dependence on exporting unprocessed raw materials.

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“This economic model is unsustainable and deprives Africa of jobs, industrial growth, foreign exchange earnings, and the opportunity to become technological leaders in the global market,” he said

He maintained now is the time for a bold, coordinated shift from extraction to transformation, from exporting potential to industrializing value, and from economic vulnerability to continental resilience.”

According to the organisers, the summit is designed to mobilise continental consensus around the urgency of industrialising our resource base through innovation and value addition, it seeks to deepen alignment with the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and strengthen regional trade and industrial processing linkages while aiming to forge concrete and actionable partnerships among governments, private sector players, researchers, and development financiers that will drive sustainable transformation, not just policy pronouncements.

Ruth Tene, Assistant Editor, Agric/Solid Minerals/INEC Ruth Tene is an award-winning journalist with over 15 years experience in developmental reporting across several newsrooms, as a reporter, editor and other managerial roles. She holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Journalism from the University of Maiduguri among several other certifications She has attended several trainings and certifications both locally and internationally and has been recognized for her impactful work in humanitarian reporting, receiving the Gold Award for Humanitarian Services from the Amazing Grace Foundation. She is also a recipient of the Home Alliance Fellowship, reflecting her commitment to fostering a more humane, safer and more sustainable planet. An active member of professional journalism bodies, Ruth is affiliated with the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), the National Association of Women Journalists (NAWOJ), and the Agricultural Correspondents Association of Nigeria (ACAN), where she continues to advocate for excellence, ethical reporting, and development-focused journalism.

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