The United Kingdom (UK) government has pledge to help African countries expand their critical mineral supply chains – with a focus on promoting mineral exploration and processing, generating value-added activities and creating local jobs.
The country made the pledge on Wednesday during the Critical Minerals Africa 2023 summit in South Africa to enable African countries identify and develop bankable opportunities within their critical minerals value chains, with a view to promoting responsible exploration and development, capturing greater value and effectively managing extractive sector revenues.
Speaking on the funding support, British High Commissioner to South Africa, Antony Phillipson, clarified: “African countries rightly have a high level of ambition for unlocking the value of their natural resources and the UK will work with them in partnership to support delivery of their ambitions.
“We are committed to increasing our investment in the continent and strengthening the transparency and resilience of the supply chain for critical minerals – creating green jobs in Africa, while taking action on climate change”, the Envoy added.
Scheduled for launch next week, the pledge will take the form of an initial R20-million contribution and comes on the back of growing cooperation between the UK and Africa in the critical minerals arena.
It would be recalled that in November last year, South Africa’s President, Cyril Ramaphosa, paid a state visit to the UK seeking to leverage British capital and technology toward building South Africa’s industrial capacity.
Data on foreign investments indicated that the UK remained the largest international investor in South Africa, which is home to 80% of global platinum group metal reserves, 70% of global manganese reserves, and substantial reserves of vanadium and magnesium.
The UK is also set to host the second edition of its African Investment Summit in London in April 2024, which aims to promote bilateral trade and investment and strengthen UK-African partnerships.
