Bala Wunti used the 2026 Concordia Annual Summit in New York to warn that Africa’s new mineral wealth, lithium, cobalt and rare earth elements, could easily repeat the mistakes of its crude oil era. Why should anybody listen?
One, because Wunti spent three decades inside Nigeria’s upstream oil sector, serving as Chief Upstream Investment Officer of NUIMS and managing director of NAPIMS and the Petroleum Products Marketing Company. These posts put him in charge of multibillion-dollar national portfolios.
Two, Wunti led the renegotiation of Nigeria’s Deep Offshore Production Sharing Contracts, ending a two-decade stalemate with international oil companies and securing a larger government share of offshore revenue, a rare case of translating resource wealth into measurable returns.
With that history in view, Wunti’s argument returns to focus.
In his opinion, exporting crude while importing refined petroleum creates poverty rather than prosperity; therefore, the same pattern must not define how Africa handles its critical minerals.
For 50 years energy was priced in barrels, he said; for the next 50, it will be priced in kilograms of lithium, cobalt, graphite and rare earth elements. Global demand for battery minerals is rising quickly, and processing capacity, not raw deposits, is becoming the real source of economic advantage.
Wunti also argued that Africa must become a processing partner rather than remain a source of raw material, calling the permanent export of unrefined minerals colonial economics even as he allowed that temporary concentrate exports may sometimes be commercially necessary.
Nigeria’s own gap is instructive. By Wunti’s reasoning, the country has identified 44 critical minerals, but geological indications are not proven reserves backed by internationally recognised data, and investors fund projects, not potential.