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It is easy to support regional mineral processing until the proposed refinery is in somebody else’s country.

Then cooperation becomes a much more consequential proposition. Whose citizens get the jobs? Whose firms win the contracts? What does a government supplying the minerals tell a population promised more value from its resources?

I left the African Minerals Policy Forum - Mining in Motion in Ghana encouraged by the willingness shown to engage with those questions. Mining Indaba helped develop the questions and areas of focus for the ministerial roundtables, with the aim of connecting policy discussions with the investment conversations we host at Indaba. Ministers were confronting the possibility that every country cannot host every processing facility, and what that means for their own industrial ambitions.

A regional investment needs a national argument. A minister must be able to explain why supporting industrial capacity across a border serves the people at home.

That argument becomes more interesting if the country supplying the ore also owns a share of the plant. Feedstock in exchange for equity came up in Ghana, and it stayed with me because it gives regional cooperation something tangible to negotiate. What is a long-term supply commitment worth? What share of the returns should it secure?

The jobs would still be across the border. Ownership would not settle every question about who benefits. But a government would have a different proposition to put to its citizens: their resources could help build an industry in which they retain an economic interest.

The promise of building at home deserves equally serious scrutiny. Sierra Leone’s Minister of Mines and Mineral Resources, Hon. Julius Mattai, walked through the stages required to turn iron ore into finished steel. Hearing a minister unpack that complexity was significant. “Local processing” can sound like a single policy decision. Delivering it requires a sequence of industrial capabilities, each dependent on infrastructure, skills, capital and markets.

Regional scale can change what is possible. Resources that cannot support a viable project in isolation may become investable when connected to neighbouring infrastructure and a wider market. That is part of the work behind the Compendium of Strategic Minerals, our partnership with Africa Finance Corporation that is now entering its second year: mapping those connections and examining where they could support investment.

The commercial opportunity and the political agreement have to develop together. Knowing where a facility could work is only part of the proposition. Countries also need to understand what they would contribute, what they would gain and which commitments they would be making to one another. Finance, industry, transport and energy ministries all have decisions to make within that agreement.

With President Mahama set to chair the African Union in 2027, Ghana’s role in convening these discussions carries particular significance. My deepest thanks to the Government of Ghana and the Ashanti Green Initiative for the opportunity to contribute. We will carry the discussion forward at Indaba through an Accra reset roundtable led by the Ghanaian minister.

I believe regional processing can create opportunities that individual countries would struggle to realise alone. But governments need something more concrete than an assurance that everyone will benefit.

The refinery next door needs to be worth backing from both sides of the border.