Grounding Value, Gaining Power: Africa’s Dual Drive for its Industrial Future & Global South Ties
Grounding Value, Gaining Power: Africa’s Dual Drive for its Industrial Future & Global South Ties
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A landmark AfDB investment is building Africa's first titanium plant, shifting the continent from raw material exporter to industrial processor. Paired with China's new zero-tariff offer, this marks a strategic pivot towards African self-determination and tangible Global South cooperation.
Today’s episode is diving into the narratives of African sovereignty and self-determination. The first signal comes from South Africa, where the African Development Bank (AfDB) is investing $75 million in the continent's first titanium dioxide plant. Dr. Tafadzwa Ruzive, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of the Free State in South Africa , frames this as a fundamental shift, where Africa moves from mere extraction to beneficiation, creating jobs, transferring technology, and grounding strategic value chains on the continent.
“The good thing now is that, it is coming from an African institution into South Africa. Instead of having that additional investors, who are maybe directly private foreign investors, say from America or the UK or Australia, coming to access African raw materials [...] putting money down in these value chains is grounding the value chains in Africa. It gives Africa more control in the value chain where instead of exporting titanium ores, Africa can now extract these titanium ores and then process them in the plant, which is what the investment is really, really directed towards. So instead of having an extractive relationship where the titanium ore is exported out of Africa and processed elsewhere, Africa, with this investment, the AFDB is planting the seeds for a value chain where extraction and beneficiation is done in Africa. This means a lot of jobs. This means a lot of technology is coming into Africa. This means more control over the prices that titanium producers in Africa are going to get out of their minerals. And also, it just improves the sovereignty [...] Africa has arrived. This is Africa's century. We are taking a greater charge of our trade, our economies, our minerals, our resources, even their transformation and beneficiation [...] We're getting into global value chains. This is Africa’s century. Africa's time has come,” Ruzive asserted.
On this high note, the episode also features the commentary of Professor David Monyae, Director of the Centre for Africa-China Studies and Associate Professor of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Johannesburg about the announcement of President of Xi Jinping that China is ready to introduce zero tariffs on 100% of goods from African countries, during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, APEC summit. According to the Professor, the zero tariffs on African goods strengthens the idea of Global South cooperation.
“I think what we are seeing is that the agreement between China and the African continent will go a long way in securing Africa and dealing with Africa's own challenges. As envisaged in the agenda 2063, the need to have massive markets overseas to deal with internal challenges such as unemployment, poverty, and inequality—those are key issues that are affecting the African continent—and the more trade volumes increase between the African continent and China and looking much more at some of the long[-term] challenges that have been there for much longer time, which is a trade imbalance, and therefore this agreement, I think, will now ease the trade imbalance [...] I think this strengthened the whole idea of the Global South because the Global South should not be a slogan, should not be rhetorics you need to see tangible results of a Global South strategy,” the scholar highlighted.
This episode also features:
Dr. Mukerrem Miftah, an assistant professor of policy studies at the Ethiopian Public Service University
Tune in to listen to the full conversation with our guests on the Pan African Frequency podcast, brought to you by Sputnik Africa.
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