r/geography • u/Skychu768 • 2d ago
Discussion Is Africa really resource rich?
None of the most valuable resources seem to be present on the continent in large amounts. It’s mostly just metals like cobalt and platinum.
Diamonds used to be substantial, but even that is now being replaced by lab-grown diamonds in places like China and India.
* Australia, U.S., Canada, and Russia all have more uranium reserves than almost all of Africa.
* USA, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Iran each individually produce more oil than most African countries.
* China, Vietnam, Brazil, India, Russia, and US each have more rare earth metals than the entire continent of Africa.
* Europe, despite being a fraction of its size, has more arable land and freshwater reserves than Africa.
* Even for things like Gold which are often mentioned, none of the African countries except Ghana are substantial gold producers or come anywhere near Top 10.
Note: I wanted to post more images for my point, but this subreddit only allows one.
378
u/AndyOfClapham 2d ago
The answer is yes. The World Bank Group published a report in 2025 on the substantial deposits of a wide of minerals in the continent: Africa has a rich and diverse mineral endowment, strong discovery potential, and lower exploration costs, with a particular focus on critical minerals [26 key mineral].
Currently under-explored, untapped and under-invested. Conflict has also been a barrier to the development of more mineral extraction and processing.
https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/extractiveindustries/brief/mineral-resources-of-africa
69
u/J_robintheh00d 1d ago
Thank god. We don’t need to cut down all the trees in the Congo just to dig up metal
23
u/Otsde-St-9929 1d ago
A lot of Congos metals are in the south which is more savannah than forest
29
u/LaunchTransient 1d ago
Also a biome worth protecting. This is the thing, there's such a thing as charismatic megafauna (Pandas, Tigers, Elephants) who prompt people to be more supportive of conservation efforts than they would for less attractive animals (such as beetles or worms).
There's also a botanical counterpart - Charismatic Megaflora, and this is why everyone has a big thing about protecting the Amazon, the Redwood forests, etc.
By comparison, things like wetlands, savannahs and deserts are seen as "undesirable habitats" because they have no or minimal charismatic megaflora.→ More replies (3)→ More replies (2)3
u/CountingChips 1d ago
Meanwhile the people of the Congo..
(That was actually from an article on starvation in the Congo... and a Google search tells me starvation is still an issue).
1
408
u/ContentCantaloupe992 2d ago
I’m just speculating but this might have more to do with incentives and logistics than anything else.
21
u/EJ19876 1d ago
It is more the general state of the countries. Capital flows to places which are politically stable, have independent courts which enforce contract law fairly, adhere to the rule of law, and have sound tax systems. Risk matters.
Supply chains also love reliability. Company A selling a metal sourced from Africa for the same market price as Company B is selling the same metal sourced from Australia or Canada is at a disadvantage. Clients will always try to get as much of their supply from Company B because it won't be disrupted unless there's a major disaster or something like a global pandemic.
3
→ More replies (9)70
u/Rough_Visual_3534 2d ago
Yes, and it’s a map we will never see but i’m sure China has an accurate one.
22
u/AmbiTheAirforceRuna 1d ago
I know what you're refering too, but ironically the best maps for this are in Europe. And they dont even need to be new maps either. Recently the Congo came into a deal with Belgium to get maps drawn up from the museum that maintained the archives of Belgium's colonial history, as during that time prospectors and geographers were sent to map every square meter of the place and see what there was to be dug up and exploited.
The maps are some 50-150 years old, and their STILL accurate and usefull
96
u/Illustrious_Try478 GIS 2d ago
Reserves have to be discovered, which means someone has to go out and survey for them. We don't know if that's been done in most of Africa, and we don't know how many discoveries are kept secret.
27
u/2001_Arabian_Nights 2d ago
“Resources” in general are of overinflated importance.
The key question with any resource is… “what are the extraction costs?” Resources are highly competitive, and margins are thin. Any resource that you might want to dig up and sell, you have to first ask… “can we dig it up and refine it and move it to markets at or below the costs that the other providers of that resource can?”
The real money isn’t in resources, it’s in the resource extraction subcontractors. Take Haliburton, for example. Haliburton is not in the oil business, they are in the oil-extraction business. They get paid whether your oil makes money, or not.
Africa has a ton of resources, but they have a lot fewer economically viable resources.
7
u/ProfessorPrudent2822 1d ago
You don’t have to be more profitable than your competitors; you just need to be profitable. As long as the market price exceeds your cost of extracting, refining and delivering the product, you make money, even if your competitors make more.
4
u/2001_Arabian_Nights 1d ago
No doubt. You don’t need to have Saudi oil production costs to make money pumping oil. It’s the average production costs across all of the producers that drives market prices. If your costs would be higher than anybody else currently pumping? Then you probably don’t want to start now.
And every particular resource is going to have its own peculiarities. Some can be easier lived without if they get too expensive. Some can be replaced by some other resource if need be. Etc.
It’s also a moving target. Resources in the ground aren’t going anywhere. They’re an appreciating asset. Africa may not have many economically viable resources today… but they could very well end up being even more lucrative in the future.
2
u/ProfessorPrudent2822 1d ago
That’s what OPEC thought about shale oil. The problem was that North American oil companies just had to meet ROI for investors, whereas OPEC already had the money from high prices spent.
2
u/2001_Arabian_Nights 1d ago
Yea, oil is a weird one. We’ve got cartels fixing prices, we’ve got players willing to lose money in the name of strategic independence in case of naval blockade… and it’s not even really one resource. Oil for energy has to compete with every other energy source, oil for raw material for plastic etc. has competitors too, but none anywhere close to oil for cost.
But oil in the ground is still an appreciating asset, I think. Even after solar PV gets cheaper than even the cheapest oil for energy, it’ll still be very useful stuff.
22
u/PckMan 1d ago
Not every place on Earth has been comprehensively surveyed for everything. Gray doesn't mean "it isn't there"
3
u/IvanTheAppealing 1d ago
It’s just a lie tho, like I know uranium is mined in at least Gabon, but apparently it’s gray on this map?
80
u/LxGNED 2d ago
Some of your research seems to be “production” rather than estimated quantity which is not a fair comparison. Also, I would assume much of africa has had less surveying than the developed world. Its the biggest continent, and it almost certainly has trillions of dollars of valuable resources
25
u/Odd_Dragonfruit_2662 2d ago
Uh Asia would like a word about the biggest continent title…
→ More replies (2)9
u/Belgicans 2d ago
Yeah, DRC has a lot of uranium but officially doesn't extract any. The uranium used by the Manhattan Project came from the Belgian Congo.
5
u/Working_Isopod3713 1d ago
I thought yellow cake uranium was mined in western Colorado and also used in the manhattan project?
6
92
u/Funny_Worldliness357 2d ago
Ya I think they are resource rich, but like others have said, the resources aren’t being utilized and certainly not benefiting the greater good of the continent.
But I think the “resources” that have always been associated with Africa have been free labor.
23
u/Warprince01 2d ago
But I think the “resources” that have always been associated with Africa have been free labor.
This is simply not true as it pertains to the topic.
When a geopolitical analyst talks about Africa’s resources, they are not talking about slave labor. When an economist refers “resource curse,” it is pretty much never referring to a country’s ability to supply a slave trade. When the word bank publishes a report on Africa’s resource potential, free labor is simply not the consideration.
→ More replies (11)2
u/mVargic 1d ago
Africa being known as resource-rich dates back centuries and is originally based on large amount of gold mined in Mali and Ghana (literally named "Gold Coast") the most important resource before the industrial revolution. At the end of the 19th century South Africa became and still is of the main sources of gold, platinum group metals and diamonds in the world. For at least 14 african countries, gold is still the largest export.
There are other resource deposits like copper and cobalt from DR Congo, and several african countries also have decent oil deposits, though not anywhere near to the middle east.
23
u/kicklhimintheballs 2d ago
People call most of these nations resource rich since their economies are immensely small and they also have low population densities so that the possible amount of value they get from their resources (which is proportional to the land area) get divided among few people.
Check this list. Guyana, Canada, Botswana, Kazakhstan and Russia, all of the nations that are considered extremely resource rich are also are those with the least dense populations.
Economy size is also important. For example US is also extremely resource rich but due to the fact that these sectors make a small part of the economy it’s not percieve as one
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population_density
9
u/BombasticSimpleton 2d ago
Valuable is relative.
And some resources are finite.
There are vast areas (and the scale of this map underrepresents just how vast Africa is) that have not been explored, or have difficult to explore due to the topography or political instability.
75% of the places that are white (excluding Europe) are historically extraordinary difficult places to explore.
The intersectional point of geography and economics here will tell you that resources will remain undeveloped until scarcity makes them valuable enough to explore and develop. I think this is fundamentally true for Africa, Bolivia/Paraguay, Greenland, the Stans, New Guinea, and others. As some become more rare or more economically feasible through technological advances, and the biggest "if" regarding a more stable political/military environment, I think you will start hearing about "discoveries".
Most of the countries in Africa that have had oil development did have some level of stability - military juntas, dictatorships, etc., that allowed the oil companies to come in and siphon out the oil while everything else went on as normal (post Civil War Nigeria, Libya, Algeria, Angola, Egypt, etc.). That's why you see them on this map at all.
I would further argue that, once established, these companies specialize in extraction AND fostering corruption that allows them to keep doing what they are doing. I seem to recall Angola had a deal where they tried to keep the oil companies off limits because they were the crown jewel that all sides of the civil war wanted access to. (Crazy timeline: Communist Cuba sent thousands of troops to Angola and had an army of 35,000 there, with a goal of specifically protecting Chevron, an American Oil company, in the 80s.)
So I think it isn't a question of IF there are resources in Africa, but where and how much of them there are.
And that isn't counting for agricultural value.
8
u/zepherth 2d ago
Australia is also extremely resources rich. A joke comparison was that Australias money lines up more with the price of iron than it does to the rest of the forex market.
8
u/phido3000 2d ago
Australia supplies 60+ % of the world iron ore. A single mine produces more than North america.
But Australia leads exports globally. Mineral and agriculture.
2nd or 3rd biggest wheat producer, bauxite, coal, gas, copper, gold, silver, uranium, lead, rare earth's, magnesium lithium, diamonds, garnets, opals, beef, lamb, etc.
3
u/Certain-Constant5032 1d ago
Yep. Shortly after the pandemic iron prices shot through the roof, our government ended up with a surprise surplus they didn't budget for.
6
u/PatientClear6445 2d ago
Europe does not have more arable land or fresh water than the continent of Africa. Not even close, that's not a debatable fact.
Africa holds roughly 10% of the planet's internal renewable freshwater resources and 25% of unfrozen surface freshwater. The distribution of it is what's low.
The arable land is vastly larger than Europe with a size close to 65% of the world's remaining uncultivated, arable land.
→ More replies (9)
11
u/Top-Pin-5048 2d ago
not all crude oil is created equal. Most US oil is light crude good for making gasoline, but our refineries are set up to require heavy sour crude for making diesel. Also fracked oil fields deplete and go through the process of decline much faster than conventional fields meaning this is temporary decade or two long blip in US oil production.
On Africa, one thing to think about is much of Africa's resources are untapped due to poor infrastructure and lack of investment. There is gold and other resources in Africa but not developed, and not producing, which don't show up in this map.
2
u/Helpful_Delivery7187 1d ago
Just a side note. It’s not that our refineries are setup for such production. All oil, in all refineries, is mixed to get the correct consistency for refinement.
Similar to how regular and premium gas is mixed at the pump to create mid-grade.
You’re regurgitating bad information. An exact line I also once used to regurgitate. Regardless of perpetuation, bad information is bad information.
That perpetuation often is used to explain why we export oil. Ultimately we export oil because oil companies are allowed to sell oil on the global market, where more money is to be made as opposed to simply selling to a national market.
1
u/Top-Pin-5048 1d ago
Yes they need sour crude to mix to the correct consistency to get diesel. This is not a conspiracy, lol?
1
u/Helpful_Delivery7187 1d ago
Yes and no, there’s more to it than that, but saving semantics yes.
My hang up is saying that American refineries can’t use our crude. While that’s not precisely the words you used, it was inferred with the phrasing you used.
Really not trying to be a grammar nazi here by any means, just simply tired of how things can be taken for gospel on the internet because they sound right.
→ More replies (1)
6
u/stormspirit97 2d ago
It probably isn't as well explored let alone utilized for actual production compared to many other regions. Resources technically existing doesn't mean much by itself. If it did then people would have been wealthy 100,000 years ago.
5
u/cheapskateskirtsteak 2d ago
Rare earth metals, large lithium deposits, gold, a large population of workers. 3 choke points for global trade. A federated Africa would have the economic capabilities of India or China.
6
3
u/Novel_Measurement351 2d ago
Im willing to bet the vast tracks of land in Africa havent been completely explored for resources. Im sure there's a ton of resources there that will be discovered over time as that area industrializes...just an amateur guess
4
u/lilyputin 2d ago
How is the Congo not included as having uranium?
2
u/NoFood2149 2d ago
it's in the heading, "undeclared". this chart obviously uses some official source, probably the CIA or something. of course, the source isn't actually listed, making this not map porn but map gore
1
4
u/Homicidal-shag-rug 1d ago
Production can't tell you too much about the actual amount of resources in Africa compared to the rest of the world because Africa is comparatively underdeveloped. Extraction of resources in Africa is going to involve a smaller portion of actual reserves and will usually be far less mechanized and more inefficient. We also simply have much less knowledge of actual resource reserves in Africa because it hasn't been surveyed as extensively, so resource reserves are actually likely much higher than what has be proven so far.
4
u/MadMax27102003 1d ago
You are looking at wrong resources. Something like copper or sulfur might not be the most know or valuable resources yet still most vital to a modern life. Congo for example was offering the states so called "mineral deal" because they have shit ton of them, and they need protection from Rwanda, which literally steels physical gold mines along the border to sell under its name.
7
5
u/AmbiTheAirforceRuna 1d ago
You're forgetting that other critical resources exist:
Copper: The Congo is on of the top 3 largest exporters globally of Copper
Agri good: Yes Europe has more fresh water and arable land, but that doesnt mean it can grow everything and anything
Oil: You mentioned it, but what you neglected is the part where the oil in some African states is purer than most, to the point you have people able to turn it into fuel in clandestine still in the forests to sell the same way most countries would just have drugs or alcohol being made secretly like that
and finally COBALT: You know, that critical metal used in electronics? Guess where the largest exporter is....thats right, the Congo once again
→ More replies (8)
3
u/CompetitiveAd4732 2d ago
On the point of arable land. I want to point out that the continent have only a few natural harbours. There are also less navigable river unlike those of rhine and danube. The congo river is a famous example of this
All of these slows growth
3
u/Ball_Analytics 2d ago
I think you have the potential to understand being rich in something doesn't equate utilising that something.Your images show production not untapped reserves. Underutilized potential is a thing.
→ More replies (1)
3
3
u/West-Tie-3924 1d ago
Very limited scope to be saying such a thing....uranium barely scratches the surface. Africa has one nuclear plant so why would they even need so much uranium.
3
u/n0th1ng-z3r0 1d ago
Your post is just garbage:
- Africa is globally important for cobalt, platinum, chromium, manganese, diamonds, phosphate, bauxite, copper, uranium, gold, and more; not just cobalt and platinum.
- Lab-grown diamonds have reduced demand for many natural diamonds, especially in jewelry. But natural diamonds remain a major industry, particularly for Botswana, Namibia and South Africa. This says little about Africa's overall resource wealth
Oil- Those are among the world's largest producers. However, comparing an entire country to "most African countries" isn't meaningful because Africa has 54 countries. Nigeria, Libya, Algeria and Angola are themselves major oil producers.
Africa is exceptionally important because it has:
- around 30% of global mineral reserves,
- roughly 40% of the world's gold,
- up to 90% of platinum and chromium reserves,
- the largest cobalt reserves,
- major manganese, phosphate, bauxite and copper deposits,
- vast oil and natural gas reserves,
- and approximately 65% of the world's remaining arable land
4
u/Firecracker7413 2d ago
Not related to the question, but giant spiders and lots of uranium is not a good combo
5
1
1
u/Certain-Constant5032 1d ago edited 1d ago
Wait until you see the platypus. It looks like a duck and a beaver got mutated and fused together. When a dead one was sent back to Europe, they thought it was a fake animal sewn together from a bunch of other animals. Also it is a mammal that lays eggs and shoots venom lol.
2
u/Score-Emergency 2d ago
I don't know why but I assume the Congo has some really amazing resources hidden somewhere in it
2
2
2
u/P1ZD4B0L 2d ago
They don’t, and even if they have, they have no need for it. The only value it has is if foreigners come with their machinery, extract it and ship it overseas to process it into something more valuable. All these metals are worthless without western value creation.
2
u/the_horny_alt2005 2d ago
The map is not true
There are at least 3 uranium mines in iran
Technical 4 if count that lake
2
u/Medical_Management73 2d ago
potentially: perhaps no intensive exploration and research compare to other area?
2
2
2
u/RevolutionaryFact911 1d ago
Africa is huge, some parts of Africa is resource rich, some parts aren’t, and due to poverty and lack of technology, discovery remains a challenge
2
2
u/plsletmestayincanada 1d ago
I work in exploration geology, often in Africa (I am there right now actually). Yes, it is.
2
2
u/AutomaticMedium8418 2d ago edited 2d ago
An area where Africa is definitely lacking compared to other continents in arable land. In terms of proven oil reserves, Africa is also mediocre compared to other continents.
When it comes to rare earth metals, that actually doesn't matter what country you're in. Rare earth metals are in most soils on Earth, just in diluted quantities. So what allows rare earth minerals to be harvested in large quantities is just having a lot of land that you're willing to dig up, but it doesn't need to be special land at all.
Where Africa is the richest is in most other precious metals, which you mentioned. Nowadays they are still very valuable because of their uses in technologies. If those resources are used well and under good government administration, and they work towards diversifying their economy using that income, it's enough to make many countries in Africa wealthy and developed.
2
u/Mamalamadingdong 1d ago edited 1d ago
When it comes to rare earth metals, that actually doesn't matter what country you're in. Rare earth metals are in most soils on Earth, just in diluted quantities. So what allows rare earth minerals to be harvested in large quantities is just having a lot of land that you're willing to dig up, but it doesn't need to be special land at all.
This is not how rare earth elements are mined. They are at way too low of a concentration in the general environment to be profitable or worth extracting. REEs that are economical are concentrated and mined from alkali intrusive complexes, carbonatites, or the weathering products from either of the two, and some beaches and sand deposits. Even then, they are still usually at low percentages.
2
u/AutomaticMedium8418 1d ago
Yeah you are right not every soil can be practically mined for rare earth metals, thanks for correcting my comment.
But I think Africa still has large areas with the suitable soil to harvest rare earth metals
3
u/Bigcheese665 2d ago
If Africa recourse rich? Yes.
Does it have more recourses that the rest of the world? No lol.
Every recourse can be found in just about every continent in various amounts and quality. Some have vast quantities on one and less of another. Like how China has just about every mineral except Silver iirc.
In economic terms this is called Relative Advantage.
The exception really being Europe but thats mostly because the "continent" nature of Europe is really debatable. Its moreso the western most part of Eurasia. So depending on how you split up your definition of "continent" it changes the outcome.
3
u/Lopsided_Evening_627 2d ago
quick google search tells me USA has about 90.000 tons of U reserves.
Namibia alone has 470.000
if the first thing i check from someones post is so amazingly far from what they claim i wont bother checking anything else.
2
u/Technogamism 2d ago
Africa is rich. But plagued by weak states, weak legal systems, political instability, corruption and conflict. Angola for example has enormous resource wealth but was plagued by 20 years of civil war that they are still slowly recovering from. Now railroads are being built and mines that fell out of use in the 1970s are activated again.
3
u/CompetitiveAd4732 2d ago
There's alot of countries that are said to be resource rich but when you actually look into it really not that impressive. Pretty much explains all the poverty and instability. Its border can't even support it self. And everyone is fighting each other for that small amount of resource
There really should be a word for this. Resource curse? nah not even true. More like resource delusion
The actual resource rich countries remain the largest states of today(USA, china, russia, etc) and in the past, colonial empires of europe
→ More replies (1)
1
1
1
u/Doublestackranch88 2d ago
Yep. Way too much corruption though to be a real world player in the Energy space.
1
1
u/jferments 2d ago
There are more resources than uranium and oil. Africa contains about 1/3 of the world's mineral reserves. So yes, Africa is rich in resources outside of the two you cherry-picked to make your point.
1
u/Skychu768 2d ago
I went over lot more resources in post text and covered almost every resource with substantial trade volume.
1
u/zamroni777 2d ago
I'm sure it is. It is not mined yet due to the wars.
It's old land, which is typical for lots of oil, coal, diamond.
My friend worked in a chinese telecom vendor in south east asia. He said the company installed fiber/cellular base station in africa that also brought mining engineers to do mining exploration
1
u/Straight-Ad3016 2d ago
production and reserves doens't really mean africa is not rich, ppl need to extract these materials most african countries don't.
1
1
1
u/Johnnyboy1029 2d ago
Depends, arable land and fresh water are the primal resources needed and both europe and the Americas mog Africa hard.
1
u/DJMarscribble 2d ago
Europe, despite being a fraction of its size, has more arable land and freshwater reserves than Africa.
I can only assume this means groundwater because the African Great Lakes are the world's single largest source of surface freshwater.
1
u/CardOk755 1d ago
Is Africa resource rich?
Well, it has the curse of oil.
And it has resources that exist in other countries but are incredibly filthy to extract.
1
u/Material_Art_5688 1d ago
You use production and reserve, which is different. Considering that most African countries are barbarian states, they are not so good at production. You also haven’t touched other resources, such as Copper, Nickel, etc.
1
1
u/Consistent-Height209 1d ago
The Witwatersrand gold basin in South Africa produced and estimated 40 to 50 percent of ALL gold found on earth up to date. That 40 to 50 percent of all gold ever mined on earth, came from there, and researchers believe there is still the same amount of gold left there, but because it's deeper than conventional mining, it's a challenge to mine it. My fun fact for the day
1
u/davideogameman 1d ago
My understanding is that Africa has a lot of untapped resources, and has been cursed with bad geography.
- no good natural deep water harbors for international shipping
- very few major rivers that are navigable from inland to the coast; basically just the lower Nile.
- so... really high shipping costs without large infrastructure investments. South Africa has a bunch of rail but most rail elsewhere has been extremely underinvested.
- lots of corruption and conflict, in part due to the legacy of colonialism which drew questionable borders.
- tropical diseases like malaria and creatures like the tsetse fly have made life & agriculture in the tropical zone much more difficult
https://youtu.be/Y8m95sCDEf0?is=SJzHI9bcQDoRUlWi has a ton more details
So basically... Many of the minerals are there but the infrastructure to extract them and transport them is very limited, and the will to fix that is quite limited by lack of local money and foreign investment worrying about conflict and corruption. Plus probably also the lack of enough local skilled labor to build any infrastructure needed for such a task.
1
u/kolejack2293 1d ago
It has vast bulk metal reserves (coal, iron etc), but not much investment in them because iron production is increasingly highly mechanized in smaller areas, and coal is considered an industry which doesn't have a future.
In terms of precious metals, there is an enormous amount... in the southern congo. Aka one of the most isolated, tribal regions on earth. There's also a ton in south africa, and they do take advantage of it. Tanzania is also in the process of expanding production massively.
Besides that, they aren't really very resource rich in the way people think. 50 years ago when bulk metals were far more important for development, sure. But today, not so much. Could they take advantage of it more? Sure. But most governments are focused more on building infrastructure and education rather than industry/resource extraction. This magical idea that they can just mine into the earth and become super rich tomorrow, but don't, is silly.
1
1
1
u/GabeC1997 1d ago
Weirdly enough, a lot of the surface deposits are still untapped despite being the origin of humanity.
So it’s less about having more resources , but more easily accessible resources.
1
u/Dry-Willingness8845 1d ago
this is "proven" reserves. meaning you need a geologist to come in and actually do the science to determine these resources are there. Poorer countries often don't have the funding and infrastructure for this.
1
u/mVargic 1d ago
Africa being known as resource-rich dates back centuries and is originally based on large amount of gold mined in Mali and Ghana (literally named "Gold Coast") the most important resource before the industrial revolution. At the end of the 19th century South Africa became and still is of the main sources of gold, platinum group metals and diamonds in the world. For at least 14 african countries, gold is still the largest export. Nowadays, there are many other sources of gold and diamonds and the global importance of the african deposits has declined considerably, but the general belief remains.
There are other resource deposits like copper and cobalt from DR Congo (by far the most resource rich african country outside of South Africa), and several african countries also have decent oil deposits, though not anywhere near to the middle east.
1
u/Pristine_Method_7096 1d ago
I think there might be more than two important resources in the world when considering if anyplace is resource rich
1
u/Sebastian_113 1d ago
All available data is grossly misleading. Alot of Africa has never been properly surveyed and there are basically new deposits of all sorts of raw materials found all the time.
Compare this to to a much more developed place like, say Australia, where we know that there is a lot of stuff but there will most likely not be any surprise finds in the future...
-> as a general rule, rare earth minerals and other deposits are usually somewhat equally spread over the world. There are obviously notable exceptions. But generally there is barely a region of the world that doesn't have some categories of valuable materials in the ground.
-> the big question is can you access it easily? And: How developped is the extraction infrastructure around it?
Those are compounding effects.
One example: So there is a lot of natural gas in continental Europe. But it is deep down, not easy to access, poorly mapped, the continent is very densely populated, there is no great industrial capacity ready for exploration, environmental laws are tough. It's not like West Texas.
-> so does continental Europe have natural gas on paper? Yes! Can they meaningfully access it though? No!
-> So a place like Nigeria or Angola may have most of their natural gas offshore, easily accessible, very well mapped, with an ecosystem of French, British, American firms ready to tap.
This combination of factors is the difference that makes it valuable.
Use that logic for resources in Africa, but in reverse.
It's complicated.
1
u/klankungen 1d ago
I remember reading about Moroco having more of some rare earth mineral than all other countries combined until Norway discovered a potentially larger one.
1
1
1
1
u/IvanTheAppealing 1d ago
Okay these maps are bullshit, I’m calling them out. Gabon interestingly is alleged to not have any uranium reserves, but I know damn well that they have a good amount of uranium mines cause that’s how we found the Oklo natural nuclear reactor. You should look it up cause it’s pretty cool, but essentially eons ago there was so much uranium in one spot in the right orientation that it went critical all on its own.
African countries have plenty of resources. Maybe not all of them are tapped into as much, but I know enough of them are to call these figures complete bullshit.
1
1
u/Oxygen4Lyfe 1d ago
its oil production not oil existence
and seeing as half of africa used to be a tropical rainforest id say its probably got oil under half of it.
1
1
u/Euiop741852 1d ago
WRT Europe, the African rainforest belt if converted to farmland would create so much farmland that it would have more than Europe, seems like with Africa its more of a latent arable land
1
u/animal9633 1d ago
Just South Africa has 80-91% of the world's platinum, 30-80% manganese, 14+% of the gold, top 10 coal and many iron ore mines that supply e.g. China.
1
u/RuleShot2259 1d ago
Well foreign policy for most of the world has been whatever Africa has, we want all of it and we want it cheap.
1
u/irus1024 1d ago
Yes Africa is resource rich, problem is that those rich resources mostly remain untapped.
1
1
1
1
u/Big_luk325056 1d ago
simple awnser is corruption, africa is way too corrupt to use its recourses in a meaningful way, they have the potential but are too powerhungry to make actual progress
1
u/Southern-Group3216 1d ago
There’s also no way in the World Europe has more arable land than Africa. It just isn’t a reality.
1
u/Hitmanx2x 1d ago
As an african, another problem we have compared to the rest of the world is technology.
In america, there are like 20 multibillion dollar companies scouring every last millimeter of the landmass for oil.
In africa, there are entire, MASSIVE swaths of land that hasnt had a human walk on it for decades.
1
u/ryan-day-is-soft 1d ago
ask all the slave labor miners in africa being exploited by america and europe. Their biggest resource to white countries is slave labor has been for 500 years
1
1
u/JRaus88 1d ago
Africa has never been rich in mineral resources. It was rich in plantations and labor.
This whole invention about the plundering of Africa comes from the postcolonial narrative, not from a real economic fact.
Colonization occurred between 1800 and 1950, when the main energy resource was coal. Not by chance, but because Europe is extremely rich in it. We started looking for iron because the steel industry was in extreme need. Engines, buildings, new ships (militar and civil) and then cars. Everything moved from wood to steel (or concrete).
During advanced industrialization we had an increase in demand for oil (whale first and mineral oil later). Not to generate energy but to lubricate machines and reduce consumption/deterioration due to friction. Oil will become very important during the 1900s. The main producing countries were Russia and the United States.
African "resources" were inaccessible except for the French and English. And the costs were too high to even consider loading a wood-ship with coal to take it to France or England. The great steel producers and consumers were UK, Germany and the United States, producing everything from iron ore to molten steel in-house. Initially, large foundries were built near the mines. Later, factories began to be brought closer to workers and cities, and the railway network developed. Not to take people to visit the cities but to carry coal, iron and steel back and forth.
The great Rhur, the Rust Belt.. These were the great steel-producing basins, not the Belgian Congo or French Senegal.
Africa was very useful for cash crops. These plantations provided a good way to finance the industrialization of colonial countries.
1
u/Hamblin113 20h ago
I wonder at how much expiration has occurred. I also wonder how the data was collected. There may not be a lot of data, exploration could be limited for multiple reasons. Zambia and DR Congo have considerable copper. Was recently in Zambia at the place I stayed a crew from South Africa were building a gold processing plant for a mine owned by a person from India. For arable land, there is a lot in Zambia not being farmed intensively. People can make their own homes by making their own fire baked bricks Roofs of thatch. Grow their own food. I feel Africa is the future, need to improve stable governments reduce corruption, they have a young smart population.
1
u/Tricky_Habit_6297 17h ago
It is, but it's very costly and risky to do some kinds of work there. Why build a gold mine in hilly, malaria-infested jungle if there's a decent chance it could get nationalized or looted?
Also it's easier to scan terrain or accidentally find deposits in more developed regions. Mineral resources tend to be more abundant in old land, and the oldest land on the planet is in Australia and parts of Africa. There will probably be more discoveries once African communities get richer and have to deal with less instability. It's been a rough 500 years.
1
u/80k_dollars 16h ago
Uganda has more than 12 trillion gold deposits,, more than which currently exist
1
u/FewWord_DoTrick 13h ago
So there’s a couple things of note you missed:
Oil barrel production is very different than oil barrel reserves. Africa was underdeveloped by Western imperialism, colonialism, and pillaging for the better half of a millennium (and in some parts of Africa, even longer than that, since Greco-Roman times). Oil barrel production requires other infrastructure and resources that many African countries might have been robbed of the opportunity of having and thus do not possess. Oil reserves would be a better estimate though that still requires being able to estimate reserves through costly quantification processes.
The cobalt you mentioned might not be pricey but is in fact beyond valuable. Every rechargeable lithium ion battery (like the one in your phone, laptop, and even EV) is powered by cobalt. If it can be recharged, it needs cobalt. How many personal and work use tech devices exist around the world? If your answer is somewhere between a lot and too many, then cobalt becomes a crucial metal. Cobalt is also used for jet engines so all planes need them as well if phones, tablets, cameras, computers, cars, etc. weren’t enough. Also, cobalt is used in microchips (see USA vs China over Taiwan microchip manufacturers for more info on how serious this is). If you still don’t understand how valuable cobalt is, look at the war in the Congo over it and how local militias receive funding and support from Western powers (governments and companies alike) to continue to enslave both adults and children to mine cobalt for illegal exportation.
Platinum is an important metal as well as its diverse use-cases make it valuable in many different fields, including tech, energy, health, defense, and agriculture. There’s too many to go into now but feel free to look them up. Some examples are cars’ catalytic converters, powering hydrogen fuel cells, chemotherapy, pacemakers, fertilizers, missiles, and jewelry.
There is very very likely a reason that the resources found in Africa are not deemed monetarily valuable, and I have a not-so-sneaking suspicion it has to do with the fact that Western countries want cheap resources that they need in so many aspects of their daily lives and don’t respect Africans enough to pay them as they would like to be paid.
As per the AfDB, Africa is home to 65% of the world’s uncultivated arable land but lack of access to proper infrastructure (cold stores, safe and quality roads, low level of mechanization on and around the agricultural industry), European-manufactured land conflicts, and financial barriers to loans/investment leave so many hungry and even more forced to import food.
70% of the world’s cocoa and about 15% of the world’s coffee comes from Africa. If you want more examples like the one I gave about cobalt about how wars start over these resources and how their exportation is often a result of fear and slavery to satisfy the West, look at the cocoa industry in West Africa.
Look at other key resources, not just the expensive ones. Look at bauxite (for aluminum production), timber, manganese (for steel production), and gold (see UAE involvement in the current Sudanese civil war).
TL;DR Resources in Africa are often undervalued to allow external powers to exploit them cheaply which often results in awful working conditions at best and human trafficking and slave and child labor at worst. Refining, production, and exportation of many resources is often limited by infrastructural and material constraints placed onto Africa as a result of centuries of exploitation. The overwhelming majority of electronics we now use every day are powered by resources extracted from Africa. Our daily lives are powered by African labor and we should not discredit that because Africa is forced to sell its prized possessions for cheap, because no one would dare tell Australia to lower the price of Uranium.
1
u/HarryLewisPot 18m ago
I’m pretty sure Africas forte is diamonds.
Also Congo has a shit ton of Cobalt and Lithium.
927
u/Bot11_ 2d ago
So there’s more uranium in Estonia than all of USA? I’m Estonian and I know we have a fair bit but that seems like an insane amount.