"Africa’s lithium and cobalt shall not be thrown away like trash!"

...Africa has started waking up. We slept through the Industrial Revolution, and the outsiders came took away our people as slaves. When slavery was outlawed, they came and took away our energy as we worked in the plantations or the mines. In the process, they took away our precious wealth, calling it raw materials. In the early sixties, we slept through the flag independence while our Arabic brothers woke up woke up in time to demand a fair price for their oil...

But, finally, the centuries, decades, years and days of sleeping might be coming to an end, for you cannot keep sleeping or you may end up sleeping forever. So, one by one, African countries are waking up. Those that have deposits of the much-sought-after rare earth minerals for powering the clean energy era are jumping out of bed and shouting that they will not throw their lithium and cobalt away like rubbish.

Last week it was Namibia. The Cabinet in Windhoek resolved that not a single gramme of unprocessed lithium or any other rare mineral will be exported from the country. Before that, it was Zimbabwe that took a similar position. There is even no need to raise voices and crease faces over this. Let the African Union rally the members to take a stand over these rare minerals. For not only are they set replace petroleum in driving the transport industry, but they too will also ultimately take the count, as poor oil now is.