The Director-General of Nigeria’s Raw Materials Research and Development Council (RMRDC), Prof. Nnanyelugo Ike-Muonso, has urged African leaders to end the era when Africa is treated as an extraction pit for raw materials.
Prof. Ike-monso told a news conference to herald the second edition of the African Raw Materials Summit (ARMS 2026), scheduled from Oct. 19 to 20 that Nigeria holds over $582.4 billion in documented non-renewable natural resources beneath its soil.
Speaking on Tuesday in Abuja on the planned summit, themed “From African Feedstock to African Factory,” he said that delegates from over 25 countries would be attending the summit.
According to him, it will drive a mandatory 30 per cent local value-addition framework for all minerals extracted across the continent.
“The era of seeing Africa as a pit for mineral extraction is over; the future belongs to resource-based manufacturing.
“For as long as we dig deeper beneath the Nigerian or African soil, everything that comes out of it must undergo a value transformation of at least 30 per cent,” he said.
The RMRDC boss stated that Africa has remained trapped in a low-value economic cycle of exporting raw materials only to import finished goods at exorbitant costs.
He explained that transitioning from policy guidelines to legal enforcement of the 30 per cent value-addition mandate will generate over 1.2 million skilled jobs within five years.
He said that it would also conserve foreign exchange and boost the manufacturing sector’s contribution to Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
“By moving from convenience to law, it is no longer about political will or what you think but about what the law says about value-addition,” he said.
Ike-Muonso said that the council had secured an operational agreement with the Bank of Industry to finance processing enterprises and reduce supply-chain losses across strategic commodity lines.
He disclosed that the RMRDC has finalised a South-South technology transfer partnership with the National Innovation Centre for Excellence (NICE) in Shanghai, China.
The move, he said, would accelerate the commercialisation of local research and connect innovators with equity investors.
GIK/APA