For decades, resource-rich African nations operated within a familiar economic model: foreign companies extracted minerals, loaded raw ore onto ships and exported it overseas, leaving producer countries with relatively limited gains from the higher-value stages of production. Across much of the continent, the pattern was straightforward — dig, transport and export.
That model is now being challenged. Countries including Zimbabwe, Namibia, Mozambique, Ghana and Guinea are imposing restrictions on the export of unprocessed minerals and requiring greater levels of domestic processing. The policies are forcing international mining companies, including major Chinese firms, to invest billions of dollars in facilities located closer to the mines themselves.
The shift is changing the nature of Chinese industrial involvement in Africa. Rather than simply extracting and exporting ore, Chinese companies are increasingly building facilities capable of processing Zimbabwean lithium into lithium sulphate or carbonate, Guinean bauxite into alumina and Mozambican graphite into materials used in batteries.
For Carlos Lopes, a professor at the University of Cape Town’s Nelson Mandela School of Public Governance, the significance of the change extends beyond mineral processing. China increasingly sees Africa as one of the few remaining large-scale regions where industrial expansion, urbanisation, infrastructure development and consumer growth can occur simultaneously over several decades, he said.
Africa, in this view, is becoming less a peripheral supplier of raw materials and more a strategic hub between increasingly fragmented economic blocs. Chinese companies are more likely to localise operations where governments can provide policy clarity, reliable energy, domestic demand and sufficient regional scale.
Lopes argues that restrictions on unprocessed exports need not discourage investment. By compelling companies to establish longer-term operations, African governments could improve the quality of investment entering their economies. But the effectiveness of such policies depends heavily on the capacity of governments to negotiate effectively and maintain coherent institutions. Without that discipline, export bans could instead encourage smuggling, policy instability and elite rent-seeking.
Zimbabwe provides one of the clearest examples of the emerging model. Prospect Lithium Zimbabwe, a subsidiary of Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt, began exporting its first consignments of lithium sulphate in April from a US$400 million plant in Goromonzi, near Harare.
The facility represents a step beyond the export of raw spodumene and petalite concentrates, which were previously shipped to China. Zimbabwe is preparing for a full ban on the export of raw lithium next year, increasing pressure on producers to process the mineral domestically.
Huayou’s plant has an annual capacity of 50,000 tonnes and was operating at 60 per cent, with full capacity expected by next year. Other Chinese companies have followed the same direction. Sinomine Resource Group has established lithium processing facilities at the Bikita mine, while Chengxin Lithium Group has done so at the Sabi Star mine.
During a tour of the Huayou facility last month, Zimbabwean Mines Minister Polite Kambamura described lithium sulphate production as a landmark in the country’s effort to capture more value from its mineral resources and support clean energy storage.
“We will rest only after we can produce … lithium batteries and solar panels,” Kambamura told reporters. He also noted plans to complete a lithium carbonate plant by August 2026.
Aly-Khan Satchu, a sub-Saharan Africa geoeconomic analyst, described the establishment of manufacturing bases by Chinese companies in Africa as a “no-brainer”. In an increasingly adversarial Chinese-US relationship, he said, “indigenising Chinese businesses in Africa and riding the wave of beneficiation is a win-win”.
Chinese companies, Satchu added, already possess strong local knowledge and a first-mover advantage on the continent.
Guinea is pursuing a similar transformation in its bauxite industry. Beyond the colonial-era Fria plant operated by Russia’s Rusal, major companies have committed to projects worth billions of US dollars. Three modern alumina refineries are under way, including projects by China’s Chalco and State Power Investment Corporation in Boffa, alongside Singapore’s Winning Consortium in Dobali.
The objective is to move beyond exporting bauxite and instead establish processing capacity within Guinea. Mines minister Bouna Sylla said last year that the country was shifting towards domestic processing because exporting raw materials was economically unsustainable.
“We are the biggest bauxite producer in the world, but we don’t have a refinery,” Sylla said. The government is enforcing mining agreements requiring local refining capacity, which would also allow Guinea to capture by-products such as gallium that are lost when raw materials are exported.
“We import aluminium while we produce the raw material. It’s not normal,” Sylla said.
The longer-term ambition is local aluminium production, although achieving it depends on securing affordable power.
In Mozambique, Jinan Yuxiao Group has invested US$200 million through its subsidiary DH Mining Development to construct a graphite processing plant in Nipepe. The facility has an annual capacity of 200,000 tonnes. Local mineral processing was also among the key issues discussed when Mozambique’s President Daniel Chapo visited Beijing in April.
The same model is emerging in Namibia, a uranium-rich country seeking to expand local processing and value addition. President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah visited Beijing last month with a delegation seeking Chinese support for domestic uranium processing and enrichment capabilities. The effort builds on existing facilities such as the Husab mine, operated by China General Nuclear Power Group.
Linda Calabrese, a senior research fellow at ODI, said Chinese companies were locating processing facilities near African resources either because doing so made economic sense or because governments required them to.
But another factor is increasingly important: the possibility of using Africa as a “neutral hub” to navigate trade barriers. Chinese investment in African production can potentially serve as a form of tariff arbitrage, although that opportunity is becoming narrower. The United States is tightening rules-of-origin tests and increasing scrutiny of facilities with significant Chinese ownership, while the European Union is moving in a similar direction.
For African countries, the emerging investment landscape presents both an opportunity and a test. The immediate challenge is to use Chinese investment in mineral processing to establish industrial capabilities capable of attracting further manufacturing investment before international trade barriers become more restrictive.
“The most strategically interesting bet is Chinese investment oriented towards African and other emerging-market demand rather than re-export to rich countries,” Calabrese said.
That calculation could become increasingly important as trade within Africa expands through the African Continental Free Trade Area. Chinese companies establishing production bases to serve African consumers would, she said, be making a longer-term investment that is less exposed to shifts in Western trade policy.
The transformation underway is therefore not simply about what happens to minerals after they are extracted. Across Zimbabwe, Guinea, Mozambique and Namibia, governments are attempting to change where value is created, while Chinese companies are adapting their industrial strategies to the new requirements.
The result could be a significant shift in Africa’s place within Chinese economic planning: from a source of raw materials shipped abroad to an increasingly important base for processing, industrial production and, ultimately, access to a growing African market.
