If critical minerals are strategic, they should be strategic for everyone

Over the past few months, I have participated in several discussions around a challenging question: how can resource-rich countries and communities benefit from the growing demand for critical minerals, while avoiding the harms that have historically accompanied mineral extraction?

History offers few encouraging precedents, and while the current mineral boom brings new technologies, industries and opportunities, many old risks remain. Much of the debate has focused on familiar, but essential, priorities: transparency, accountability, fairer distribution of benefits, industrial development, local processing, ESG principles and greater participation of local communities in decision-making. More recently, questions of geopolitics, resource nationalism and strategic partnerships have also gained prominence.

All of these discussions are important. But the growing strategic importance of critical minerals makes another, largely overlooked question particularly urgent.

If critical minerals have become strategic assets for the countries that need them, how can producing countries and communities take advantage of this, instead of continuing to sell them as commodities?

Keeping minerals at home, nationally or regionally, for development purposes, is being widely discussed and increasingly implemented as an alternative to selling them abroad as raw materials. The African Union’s Africa Mining Vision (2009) and Green Minerals Strategy (2025) call for processing minerals in Africa and building regional value chains. Countries such as Indonesia and Zimbabwe have implemented policies towards this end, by banning exports of unprocessed ores. But is there another option, between restricting minerals and giving them away as raw materials or processed commodities? I think there is, and it starts with a different kind of transparency. Current debates emphasise transparency about where minerals come from, how they are extracted and who receives the revenues. I think we also need transparency, accountability and a shared understanding of what makes minerals strategic. Today, this knowledge sits mostly with those who consume them.

What makes minerals strategic, and for whom?

Scarcity and uneven distribution are only part of the story. Minerals become strategic because particular industries, technologies and political objectives depend on them.

The same mineral can serve very different industries and political objectives, creating different forms of demand, dependencies and potentially economic opportunities. Take copper, for example. It is essential for electricity networks and renewable energy technologies, digital technologies and military equipment.

Existing critical mineral governance frameworks focus primarily on tracing and trying to shape where minerals are found, how much is extracted, where they are processed and how they are traded. This is hardly surprising, given that these frameworks have largely been shaped by the countries and industries that consume these minerals, whose primary concern is securing supply and access to them, and if that access is sustainable, even better.

Far less attention, however, is paid to their end uses: what products they become, which industries ultimately use them, which companies depend on them and for what purposes.

Yet this is precisely the knowledge that could prove particularly valuable to those who have historically lost out from the extraction and trade of their natural resources. These countries and communities have long sold their minerals as undifferentiated commodities, traded in markets far from home, supposedly because they lack the capabilities and technologies to transform them. This is partly true. But getting a better understanding to begin with and being able to participate more actively in decisions about how minerals are used could be a first step towards changing the deep asymmetry between those who produce and those who use these minerals.

This knowledge could open new opportunities for negotiation, both for producing countries seeking to transform their resources and develop new industries, and for communities seeking greater influence over what happens in their territories. It could also contribute to gaining greater influence over decisions that have historically been made elsewhere.

The opportunities, and the ways in which this power could be exercised, differ in each case, but both start from understanding who ultimately depends on these resources and for what purposes.

For producing countries

Understanding end uses could open new possibilities of collaboration, co-developing strategies of value generation and addition at home and in turn gaining access to new capabilities and technologies.

Downstream industries are usually approached by countries seeking to promote new investments and technology transfers in the processing and manufacturing industries. If the end uses of minerals were known, countries could instead negotiate from the position of countries controlling resources on which those industries depend. They could use that leverage to demand better terms, develop their own productive and technological capabilities, and gain greater influence over the industries and markets that depend on their minerals.

Take South Africa, one of the world's largest producers of manganese and platinum. These two minerals illustrate different possibilities.

South Africa produces almost 40 per cent of the world’s manganese and holds around a third of its reserves (USGS, 2026), a position that could give it considerable leverage. Its Manganese Metal Company is the world’s largest producer of selenium-free electrolytic manganese, and is developing battery-grade manganese sulphate. Chinese producers, who dominate global supply, typically use selenium in the extraction of this mineral, a highly toxic additive that lowers costs. Producing without it is more expensive, and the company has found it difficult to recover these costs, as its product is sold as a quasi-commodity and many buyers remain reluctant to pay more. What if the company could use information about end uses to identify and negotiate directly with industries that value these characteristics? Producers and buyers could develop joint supply agreements that link the qualities of extraction and processing to the final destination of the mineral. Such agreements could even lead to certification schemes that recognise how sustainably a mineral is produced, what it is used for and whether it can be recovered and recycled.

Without shared information about end use this possibility remains out of reach.

Platinum illustrates another possibility. South Africa’s position is close to a monopoly. It produces around 70 per cent of the world’s platinum (USGS, 2026), a larger share than any country other than China holds of mining-related patents, yet it continues to sell its platinum largely as a commodity. Its producers have long-standing relationships with downstream companies. The UK’s Johnson Matthey, for example, marketed Anglo American Platinum’s metal for more than two decades and is a leading refiner and recycler of platinum-group metals. Here, a value chain organised around recycling already exists, and around 140,000 kilograms of platinum and palladium were recovered from scrap worldwide in 2025 (USGS, 2026). Here too, shared information about end use could help producers and downstream companies work towards the shared objective of recycling and build closed-loop agreements. Producers could direct part of their output, by contract, towards uses from which platinum can be recovered, keeping it away from applications, such as weapons, where it is destroyed or dispersed. Recyclers would secure future supplies. In this way, producers could capture a larger part of the value generated when it is recovered and reused. And more platinum would remain in circulation, a gain for both companies and for the world.

In both cases, understanding what happens to minerals after they leave the producing country could open opportunities to shape the value chain itself, moving beyond simply accepting the conditions under which raw materials are sold.

For communities

For communities living in resource-rich territories, understanding the end uses of minerals could also open a new set of possibilities to gain bargaining power.

Communities affected by mining have long fought to protect their territories, reduce the environmental and social costs of extraction, secure a fairer share of its benefits and gain greater influence over decisions that affect their lives. Their power is considerable. We recently mapped more than 36,000 mining conflict events in over 4,000 locations between 2015 and 2022. In Latin America, resistance has stopped projects, as in Esquel, Argentina, secured a greater share of benefits, as with lithium in Chile's Salar de Atacama, and created new rules for consultation, as in Salinas Grandes, Argentina.

But what if communities could also use knowledge about what their minerals are ultimately used for, who benefits from them and whose interests they serve?

Mining projects are increasingly justified in the name of the energy transition, even though the minerals extracted may end up serving very different purposes. Greater knowledge of their destinations and uses could help communities challenge these narratives, demand accountability and develop new strategies of negotiation and resistance.

For example, communities concerned about minerals entering military supply chains could connect their struggles with peace movements and organisations campaigning against arms production. Those being asked to accept the costs of extraction in the name of climate action could demand greater transparency about whether their minerals actually contribute to low-carbon technologies.

This could also change how decisions about extraction are made. Free, Prior and Informed Consent processes, for example, could include information about expected buyers, destinations and uses. While the final destination of every mineral may be difficult to establish, bringing these questions into the discussion could give communities greater influence over decisions that are currently made far beyond their territories, including whether and under what conditions extraction should take place.

New possibilities for alliances and advocacy

Governing what minerals are used for might seem an impossible task (Marin and Johnstone, forthcoming). Minerals are blended, processed and transformed, and they disappear into countless products. Yet it is more feasible than it looks, and it can start with tracing. For decades, security regimes have followed the destination and use of uranium and chemicals, even when these materials are mixed. And while minerals may be dual use, most of the firms that buy them are not. Knowing whether a magnet was sold to a wind-turbine manufacturer or to a missile producer already says a lot about how it will be used. Some governments already require this information. China asks exporters of rare earths to report their foreign end users and uses, and the EU Batteries Regulation requires companies to identify whom they supply. The tools also exist. Contracts and off-take agreements already record who buys from whom, and traceability schemes already use digital registries and blockchain to record where minerals come from. The same infrastructure could record where they go.

Existing struggles and strategies remain essential. Communities must continue fighting for their rights, environmental protection, fairer distributions of benefits and greater control over what happens in their territories. Producing countries must continue pursuing policies to capture more value from their resources, including local processing, industrial development and greater participation in mineral value chains.

But the growing strategic importance of minerals creates an opportunity to expand these strategies by looking beyond extraction and processing, towards the industries, markets and political objectives that ultimately depend on them.

Mining justice, development, trade, climate and peace organisations each bring different experience, from defending communities and building industrial capabilities to understanding trade agreements, the material demands of decarbonisation and the resources required for military production. Understanding where minerals end up, who depends on them and for what purposes could help them work together. Communities resisting harmful mining projects could build alliances with organisations challenging the industries that ultimately consume those minerals, and producing countries seeking better terms could work with these organisations to identify strategic dependencies and negotiate conditions that extend beyond the point of export.

These alliances could also help challenge the assumption that producing countries and communities must accept the environmental and social costs of extraction in exchange for whatever economic opportunities global markets offer them. If their minerals are indispensable to particular industries and political objectives, that dependence should give them a greater say in the conditions under which those minerals are extracted, traded and used.

Ultimately, the question goes beyond how producing countries and communities can capture more value from the growing demand for critical minerals. It is about how they can use the strategic importance of their resources to exercise greater control over their own futures.

Find out more about our work at the Critical Minerals and Development Initiative: https://www.ids.ac.uk/research/critical-minerals/