A high-powered interactive workshop at Investing In African Mining Indaba proposed a range of solutions for commodity-rich African countries to work with the automotive sector to re-think industrial policy around critical minerals.
In the emerging energy transition era, the convergence of the mining and automotive sectors is set to shape the industrial strategies of many companies and countries. It offers significant opportunities, balanced by a fair amount of risk.The workshop sought to map policy, strategy and value-chain solutions to help African countries navigate this challenging new environment.
The influential panel was moderated by Dr. Martyn Davies, partner at Arena Partners, and featured Mark Goliath, Acting Divisional Executive: Manufacturing at the Industrial Development Corporation; Tatiana Aguilar, Mining and Metals Industry Manager at the World Economic Forum; Dave Coffey, Chief Executive Officer of the African Association of Automotive Manufacturers; Ilya Epikhin, Senior Principal and Global Head of Natural Resources Competence Center at Arthur D. Little; and Ken Osei, Principal Investment Officer-Manufacturing and Consumer Services at the International Finance Corporation.
“There is good news and bad news,” said Davies.
“The bad news is that the super cycle driven by Chinese growth that has underpinned the entire development trajectory of this continent is over. The good news is that a new super-cycle is emerging – driven by critical minerals and the energy transition.”
Davies said the new super cycle is powering growing new mercantilism –national economic policies to encourage exports.
“States are increasingly acting independently,” said Davies. “At the same time, automotive companies are going upstream, investing in their supply chains, often supported by countries.”
The workshop brainstormed ways for countries on the African continent to take advantage of this new trend by encouraging and facilitating the mining-automotive convergence.
Participants in the workshop suggested that there be further integration into the downstream purchasing of minerals to ensure the sector produced exactly what is needed by manufacturers.
“We can start by further integrating platinum to produce catalytic converters in South Africa,” said Epikhin of Arthur D. Little.
“Then, there can be a focus on downstream manufacturing to go deeper, into the other tools and machinery needed. Miners need to increase production volumes needed to supplydemand. So, further integration of these partnerships to look into exploration activities could also be beneficial.”
Epikhin and his working group further proposed that governments incentivise companies to use a higher percentage of local content using artificial intelligence tracing systems.
“There could be increased usage of AI by OEMs to assess the country of origin for metals used,” he said. “Then you can basically ensure that more value is added and push downstream sector development further.”
Another group noted that an easy win to encourage upstream investment would be to conduct more geological surveys.
“If we can make geological information more easily available, the investment opportunity would be far more attractive for investors,” said Tatiana Aguilar, Mining and Metals Industry Manager for the World Economy Forum on behalf of her discussion group.
Dave Coffey, Chief Executive Officer of the African Association of Automotive Manufacturers, said that it was important that Africa address convergence opportunities at a regional level.
“Regional partnerships bring the power to negotiate. And we need the African Continental Free Trade Agreement to bring in all the players and the new economies. There must also be political willingness to implement industrial policy. That requires deliberate, courageous leadership from the public and the private sector.”
Ken Osei, Principal Investment Officer – Manufacturing and Consumer Services at the International Finance Corporation, also spoke on behalf of his discussion group, noting that the EV sector was still in its early days.
“We are probably at the stage of Microsoft before Word,” he said by way of analogy. “At that time, nobody had it, but somebody had to do it. Today, someone must invest in the mineral-automotive convergence. It is an investment into the future.”