SADC’s ability to extract greater value from its critical mineral wealth will depend less on what individual countries possess and more on how their resources, infrastructure and industrial capabilities can be combined across borders, United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) Zimbabwe Country Representative Innocent Madziva has said.
By Rudairo Mapuranga
Madziva made the remarks at the Zimbabwe Alternative Mining Indaba (ZAMI) 2026 in Bulawayo while responding to a question on the areas that should be prioritised under a proposed SADC Critical Minerals Hub.
He said countries pursuing mineral-led industrialisation independently risk limiting the scale and depth of the manufacturing industries they can develop, arguing instead for regional value chains built around complementary national capabilities.
“What we have also observed in SADC is that SADC’s competitive advantage lies not in any single country but in the complementarity of its regional endowment and capabilities,” Madziva said.
“It’s not really what we have, but we need to really look to what we can do.”
His argument shifts the focus from the size of individual countries’ mineral deposits to the ability of the region to connect extraction with processing, manufacturing, energy, skills, infrastructure and markets.
Madziva said international experience showed that countries with substantial natural-resource endowments can nevertheless struggle to develop manufacturing capacity.
“What we found in general is that countries with large levels of natural resources have lower than expected levels of manufacturing in their individual capacity,” he said.
For SADC, he suggested that regional integration could provide a route to overcome some of those limitations by allowing countries to specialise in different stages of the same value chain rather than attempting to establish complete industries independently.
Battery Minerals and Precursor Chemicals
Madziva identified battery minerals as one of the areas where regional cooperation could generate significant value.
Rather than immediately attempting to manufacture finished batteries across the region, he pointed to the processing of minerals into chemicals and other intermediate products as a more achievable stage of the value chain.
He cited lithium processing in Zimbabwe as an example of the type of intermediate processing that could form part of a wider regional industrialisation strategy.
“This is the industry that we can feel,” he said, while discussing the opportunities presented by battery minerals.
The wider SADC region contains major deposits of minerals associated with the energy transition, including lithium, cobalt, copper, nickel, manganese and platinum-group metals. The challenge for governments is increasingly shifting from attracting investment into extraction alone to establishing processing and manufacturing capacity closer to the source of the minerals.
For Madziva, that process would be strengthened if countries viewed their mineral industries as interconnected rather than as separate national projects.
Green Steel and Ferroalloys
He also identified green steel and ferroalloys as another area with potential for regional value capture.
The opportunity, according to Madziva, lies in combining the different mineral, energy and industrial capabilities available across countries such as Zimbabwe, South Africa and Mozambique.
The concept is particularly relevant as international markets increasingly place greater emphasis on the carbon intensity of industrial products.
For SADC producers, the availability of mineral resources alone will therefore not be sufficient. The region will also need reliable energy, modern processing technology, infrastructure and access to markets if it is to compete in lower-carbon industrial value chains.
Regional cooperation could allow countries to combine these capabilities rather than duplicating the same infrastructure and processing capacity in multiple jurisdictions.
Linking Minerals to Agriculture
Madziva also highlighted agro-minerals as an important value chain, particularly because of their connection to food production.
“We must not forget that the agro-minerals development is not just about minerals,” he said.
He pointed to the potential for processing phosphate resources into fertiliser and agricultural inputs, linking mineral development with food security and agro-industrial development.
The argument places mineral beneficiation within a broader economic framework, where the value generated from mineral resources can support other productive sectors rather than remaining concentrated in extraction and exports.
For a region that continues to import significant quantities of agricultural inputs, greater local processing of suitable mineral resources could potentially create links between the mining and agricultural economies.
Beyond National Projects
Madziva’s intervention comes as governments across Africa seek to capture more value from critical minerals amid growing global demand for materials used in batteries, renewable-energy technologies and other industrial applications.
The issue for SADC is not simply whether individual countries have the minerals required by global industries, but whether the region can build the industrial ecosystem needed to process those minerals competitively.
That includes power generation, transport corridors, technical skills, research and development, processing facilities, financing and access to regional and international markets.
A regional approach could also reduce the risk of countries separately attempting to establish similar processing facilities without sufficient feedstock, infrastructure or market scale.
The proposed Critical Minerals Hub discussed at ZAMI therefore comes against a wider debate about how SADC can move from being predominantly a supplier of raw materials towards becoming a participant in higher-value stages of mineral supply chains.
Madziva’s emphasis was that this transition would require countries to identify where their individual strengths fit within regional production systems.
His three priority areas — battery-mineral processing and chemicals, green steel and ferroalloys, and agro-mineral value chains — provide possible entry points for that approach.
The broader challenge, however, is translating regional complementarity into commercially viable projects capable of operating across national borders.
Madziva, who has served as UNIDO Zimbabwe Country Representative since June 2025, previously held senior government positions covering industrial development, investment promotion and economic policy. He has more than two decades of experience in industrial development, investment promotion, economic policy and national development planning.
His remarks at ZAMI placed the emphasis firmly on regional cooperation as SADC considers how to convert its mineral endowment into industrial capacity and greater value capture.
ZAMI 2026 is being held in Bulawayo from 14–18 September under the theme “Powering Tomorrow: Reimagining Mining, Energy, Agriculture and Community Development in Zimbabwe.” The Indaba is convened by the Zimbabwe Environmental Law Organisation (ZELO), the Zimbabwe Council of Churches (ZCC) and the Zimbabwe Coalition on Debt and Development (ZIMCODD).
