President Julius Maada Bio has called for a paradigm shift in how African countries manage their natural resources, stressing the need to process and add value to resources on the continent rather than exporting raw materials.
In a fireside chat at UNSTOPPABLE AFRICA 2026, President Bio stressed the importance of Africa processing minerals into finished and semi-finished products to drive industrialisation, stimulate economies, and provide jobs for the continent’s growing youth population.
The first African Head of State to open this year’s program, President Bio, emphasised mineral value addition as a strategic priority.
Expanding mineral processing and downstream manufacturing across Africa would strengthen national economies, boost incomes, and generate significant job opportunities, particularly for young people entering the labour market, he said.
He also emphasised that a transition of this kind needs coordinated public policy and greater private-public investment.
“Africa must move away from the extraction and export of raw materials. “We need to process and transform our minerals on the continent and invest in the infrastructure to drive value addition, strengthen our economies and create meaningful jobs and opportunities for our youth,” President Bio said during the session.
The President emphasised the importance of infrastructure investment to unlock productive potential, as well as the need for local processing capacity. He called for more investment in transport, energy and logistics, as well as industrial infrastructure that services manufacturing and supply chains. “Infrastructure is a necessary condition for scalable, sustainable economic transformation,” he said.
