Prof. Nnanyelugo Ike-Muonso, Director-General of the Raw Materials Research and Development Council (RMRDC), has urged African leaders to end the era when Africa is treated as an extraction pit for raw materials.
According to Ike-Muonso, Nigeria holds over $582.4 billion in documented non-renewable natural resources beneath its soil.
He said this on Tuesday in Abuja during a news conference to herald the second edition of the African Raw Materials Summit (ARMS 2026), scheduled for Oct. 19 to 20.
He said the summit, themed “From African Feedstock to African Factory,” would host delegates from over 25 countries.
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 said 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 would generate over 1.2 million skilled jobs within five years.
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 told newsmen.
Ike-Muonso said 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 further said RMRDC had 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..
