The President of the African Federation of Miners and Mineral Wealth (AFMMW) has called on African governments, traditional authorities and mining unions to join forces in building local mineral processing industries, arguing that coordinated action across all three stakeholder groups is the only way to break the continent’s long-standing pattern of exporting raw materials while industrial gains accrue elsewhere.
Joseph Chewe made the call on the sidelines of the federation’s 3rd Executive Council Meeting, hosted by the Ghana Mineworkers’ Union (GMWU) at La Palm Royal Beach Hotel in Accra, which ran from March 26 to 28, 2026. Speaking to The High Street Journal, he described the current structure of Africa’s extractive economy as a historical failure that had enriched foreign economies at the direct expense of African communities.
“The minerals under African soil have long been used to develop other countries. African solutions have been realized, and we now have a role to play to make sure the narrative is changed,” he said.
Chewe outlined how the AFMMW approached the challenge structurally, explaining that the federation operated on a model that positioned it as a union-led enterprise rather than a conventional labour body. Under this approach, mining unions across member countries coordinate not merely to negotiate wages and working conditions but to actively shape how extraction and processing contribute to local economies, ensuring that value is retained on the continent rather than transferred at the point of export.
He said resources including manganese, cobalt, lithium and rare earth elements must benefit local communities and drive industrial development rather than leave the continent in raw or semi-processed form, pointing to the global energy transition as both a pressure point and an opportunity for African producers to demand better terms.
The call builds on a decision reached at the federation’s previous Executive Board Meeting in Lusaka, Zambia, where delegates resolved to incorporate an investment company focused on identifying and growing mining assets across the continent directly for the federation and its members. That structure was designed to move African mineworkers from the role of wage earners into that of direct stakeholders in the assets they help produce.
Africa holds an estimated 30 percent of the world’s critical mineral reserves yet captures less than one percent of global mineral value addition, a gap that Chewe and other federation leaders described as the continent’s central economic challenge at the Accra meeting.
Delegates at the three-day gathering deliberated on strategies to combat the casualisation of mining labour, enforce occupational health and safety standards, promote union participation in mining value chains and advocate for policies that mandate local processing. The federation also signalled plans to expand its membership base by bringing additional national mining unions under its continental umbrella.
