UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The leader of the World Trade Organization delivered a stark warning to the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday, saying that soaring worldwide demand for critical minerals should be giving resource-rich nations in Africa and beyond a once-in-a-generation opportunity to build wealth and lift millions out of poverty — but instead, it has too often sparked violence and deepened hardship.
WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala told the council that critical minerals are no longer seen simply as raw materials — they are now viewed as strategic assets and a growing source of rivalry between nations.
She explained that major world economies are scrambling to secure supplies of minerals essential to everything from smartphones to military aircraft, using that access as geopolitical leverage. The danger, she said, is that conflicts will multiply and developing nations will be stuck doing the least profitable work, while “the highest value jobs, technologies and profits go elsewhere.”
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the council that competition for lithium, cobalt, nickel, and rare earth minerals has allowed armed groups in eastern Congo to profit from illegal mining and mineral smuggling — “and civilians have paid the price of ongoing conflict.”
In Sudan, Guterres said, the fierce struggle between government forces and paramilitary groups for power and territory has been driven by the exploitation of natural resources — particularly gold and gum arabic, which is used in printing, paints, glues, cosmetics, and other industries — “leading to atrocities and displacing millions.”
“The minerals beneath Africa or any developing region’s soil should never help to finance the conflicts above it,” Okonjo-Iweala said.
She argued that there is a genuine opportunity to build what she described as “a more diversified, inclusive, and win-win global economy” — one where mineral wealth doesn’t simply get extracted and processed elsewhere, but instead drives real economic change at home.
She outlined three key priorities for making that happen. First, resource-rich developing countries should push for more local processing, refining, and value-added production. Second, international rule of law needs to be strengthened. Third — and most critically — resource-rich nations should band together and use their collective leverage to reverse the current pattern of exporting raw materials while importing finished products, and to attract meaningful investment.
“The world cannot achieve energy security, the green transition or digital transformation without them,” Okonjo-Iweala said. She added that Africa alone holds roughly 30% of the world’s critical minerals, and fewer than half of its mineral reserves have even been explored.
She noted that Congo produces more than 70% of the world’s cobalt, South Africa holds the largest known reserves of platinum and manganese on the planet, and both Zambia and Congo are major copper producers. Between 10 and 12 African countries have commercially viable lithium reserves, and 15 to 20 have exploitable deposits of rare earth minerals.
