As the global minerals economy undergoes a profound realignment, Africa must move beyond celebrating the size of its mineral endowment and begin building the collective market intelligence, processing capacity and commercial infrastructure required to participate meaningfully in how its minerals and metals are valued.
This will form a central African perspective to be advanced by Dr. Comfort Asokoro-Ogaji, Executive Director of Women in Mining Africa (WiM-Africa), when she participates as a roundtable speaker at the Shanghai Metals Expo 2026 in China this November.
The roundtable, convened by Shanghai Metals Market (SMM), will examine “Eastern Pricing 2.0: Integrating Futures, Physical Markets, Industry and Finance for the Next Stage of Global Metals Pricing.”
For Africa, the conversation raises a fundamental strategic question:
How does a continent with significant mineral resources strengthen its influence at the tables where the value of those resources is determined?
According to Dr. Asokoro-Ogaji, the emergence of new centres of metals trading, processing, manufacturing and price discovery provides an important moment for African governments, industry, producers and institutions to reconsider the continent’s position within global mineral markets.
“Africa cannot build pricing power simply by having minerals beneath its soil. We must put our African mineral ecosystem together — our producers, geological and market data, processing capacity, standards, laboratories, commodity exchanges, financial institutions and regional value chains — if we want to become more relevant in the markets where value is determined,” she said.
The discussion is particularly significant as global competition intensifies around copper, lithium, cobalt, nickel, rare earths and other minerals required for industrialization and the energy transition.
WiM-Africa believes that Africa’s response should extend beyond negotiating better terms for the export of raw materials. The continent must progressively strengthen beneficiation and processing, reliable mineral data, aggregation, traceability and certification, market intelligence, access to finance, regional trading systems and direct relationships between African producers and international buyers.
A major issue Dr. Asokoro-Ogaji intends to raise in Shanghai is whether the next generation of global metals pricing can create stronger connections between international price-discovery systems and the countries and communities from which minerals originate.
The question is not simply whether greater pricing influence will move from established Western markets towards emerging Eastern markets.
The larger opportunity is to consider how a changing global pricing architecture can become more connected to African production, African value addition and African market participation.
For women and smaller producers in particular, access to credible prices, mineral testing, specifications, market intelligence, traceability systems and direct buyer relationships can determine whether they participate merely as producers at the mine gate or as competitive businesses within higher-value segments of the mineral economy.
Africa Must Put Its Mineral Market Architecture Together
WiM-Africa is, therefore, calling for deeper continental dialogue among governments, mining companies, commodity exchanges, financial institutions, laboratories, geological institutions, processors, traders, research organisations, women-led enterprises and regional bodies.
The objective should be clear: Africa must progressively develop the institutions and infrastructure that enable it not only to produce minerals, but also to understand, process, trade and influence the value of those minerals.
Dr. Asokoro-Ogaji’s participation follows the expansion of the strategic cooperation between Women in Mining Africa and Shanghai Metals Market, creating a framework for Africa–China engagement across mining, metals, battery minerals, market connectivity, knowledge exchange, technology linkages and industry development.
As global mineral markets evolve, WiM-Africa will continue to advocate for an Africa that participates not only at the point of extraction, but increasingly across the entire chain of data, processing, markets, finance and value creation.
Africa has mineral power. The next challenge is building the market architecture capable of translating that endowment into greater economic and pricing influence.
