(Photo: Waldo Swiegers / Bloomberg via Getty Images) 
Following successive pronouncements by South African Mineral and Petroleum Resources Minister Gwede Mantashe on the need to leverage the country’s critical minerals, the ministry recently published its national Critical Minerals and Metals Strategy.
Mantashe has been vocal in criticising developed countries for defining “critical minerals” to serve their own interests, and in February this year, threatened to withhold access to these minerals from the US if it limited funding.
At the time, he called on African countries to embrace their strategic mineral advantage and take charge of growing demand. The South African critical minerals strategy seeks to do just that, by charting a roadmap that leverages these resources to the nation’s benefit, while simultaneously driving growth, job creation and industrial development.
Its stated intention is to focus on the entire value chain, with a view to growing the country’s existing industrial base while improving value addition.
The draft is sensitive to geopolitical tensions and trade restrictions and positions itself in that context, identifying the need to anchor the country as a supplier of critical minerals globally in the context of growing demand for certain minerals.
Similar to many African countries, South Africa’s value chains are primarily upstream, with a focus on extraction and export and little beneficiation and value addition. Like its neighbours, for example, Zimbabwe and Namibia, the country wants to take steps to localise beneficiation and processing.
Carbon-intensive processing
However, the strategy is less focused on leveraging minerals for the low-carbon transition and related green technologies, unlike the recently finalised African Union Green Mineral Strategy.
Instead, it continues to prop up existing carbon-intensive processing and manufacturing activities, while giving a nod to the need to pursue greener minerals and green hydrogen as future endeavours.
Noting the difference between a “green mineral” and “critical mineral” strategy, the one published by the ministry is very much the latter. This follows a unilateral view of what counts as a “critical mineral”, which Mantashe has previously stressed should be something that a country decides for itself.
In the words of the strategy, critical minerals are those which are “critical for South Africa”. This is seen to include “minerals that are strategically important for economic growth, industrial development, job creation and national security”, measured through economic potential, supply risks and risk of supply disruptions.
In the strategy, this translates into a list of 21 minerals and metals (some of which are not strictly speaking either), which fall on a continuum of “highly” critical to “moderately” critical to the country.
Sitting in the highly critical list are coal and iron ore, both extremely carbon-intensive input materials, grouped with minerals and metals well known for their green transition value, such as chrome and platinum.
Lower on the list are gold, copper and aluminium, coupled with rare earth metals, cobalt, and uranium.
This classification clearly illustrates that although there are differing interpretations of what a “critical mineral” is, the South African approach is by no means linked to forward-looking technologies or a low-carbon transition.
Coal
Instead, it presents as a lengthy shopping list of measures across a broad spectrum of mined resources to revive South Africa’s existing minerals economy, including sectors that have fared poorly in recent times, such as gold.
South Africa is not alone in designating coal a critical “mineral”. US President Donald Trump earlier this year issued the “Reinvigorating America’s Beautiful Clean Coal Industry” executive order.
This designation of coal is contrary to the forward-looking and globally driven critical minerals environment, which the strategy itself acknowledges is primarily driven by the renewable energy transition, geopolitical dynamics, technological advancements and international trade policies and standards. The latter would include the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) that penalises carbon-intensive goods and services.
The strategy also seeks to position the country as a regional hub for critical minerals’ processing and beneficiation, as well as battery manufacturing, and underscores the importance of working with other countries in the region.
Regional coordination
However, notwithstanding comments around the difficulties of nationalism and unilateral action, it does not meaningfully address how South Africa intends to work with its neighbouring partners to jointly benefit from their respective strategic advantages and what role these other countries might play.
This is something the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCTA) could play a role in facilitating and supplementing, as it provides for the progressive elimination of tariffs on mining-related goods and services between members.
The strategy then pans to other sectors such as hydrogen and fuel cell manufacturing, revitalising the ferro-alloys sector through various incentives and stimulus measures, trade measures to support the local steel industry, a handful of measures to stimulate electric vehicle manufacturing, and steps to develop a downstream industry for titanium.
The measures are detailed and considered and build on or echo previous initiatives that have sought to revitalise these aspects of the economy. For example, the focus on batteries and fuel cells to support new energy vehicles (e-mobility) in the Just Energy Transition Implementation Plan and Electric Vehicle White Paper.
The basics
To work, however, South Africa will first need to ensure it gets the basics right. Minerals and metals have little value if they can’t get to the ports or national processing facilities; if there is no power to process or utilise them; or if the ports are non-functional or congested. This has been a challenge over the past decade that has brought the South African mining sector to its knees.
The strategy acknowledges this, but offers little more than reiterating the need to deepen existing efforts (Operation Vulindlela) to support port, energy and rail infrastructure and to create special zones, support initiatives, infrastructure finance and energy conservation measures.
The strategy is laudable for the many measures and interventions it seeks to introduce or build on to further grow the sector, but given the breadth of its scope, and the legacy challenges that beset the industry, it will need a comprehensive implementation plan with sufficient financial backing and political will to get it off the ground. This may be the hardest part of all.
Similarly, if it is to overcome the nationalistic trade tendencies and geopolitical tensions to become the regional hub it promotes, it will need to develop a much clearer strategy with neighbouring countries so that each can profit from their relative advantages. DM
Olivia Rumble is a consultant to Enzi Ijayo Africa Initiative and a director at Climate Legal. Leezola Zongwe is a researcher at Enzi Ijayo, specialising in critical minerals and energy policy.