Online Reporter
Richard Muponde
Zimpapers Politics Hub
THE 25th COMESA Heads of State and Government Summit, to be held in Harare on October 22, comes at a defining moment for the global economy.
The theme, “One Market, One Future: Advancing Inclusive Industrialisation, Investment and Regional Integration in COMESA,” captures an economic imperative for Eastern and Southern Africa: to transform its vast natural resources into industrial capacity, technological advancement and shared prosperity.
COMESA is already one of Africa’s largest regional economic blocs, with 21 member States, a combined population of more than 560 million people and a geographical area of about 11.8 million square kilometres.
Its combined economic size gives it a formidable foundation from which to emerge as one of the world’s most important economic blocs.
But its greatest strategic asset is arguably beneath the soil of its member states.
The region possesses vast deposits of copper, cobalt, lithium, manganese, graphite, nickel, platinum-group metals and other minerals that are increasingly critical to the global economy.
The challenge is to ensure that these resources no longer leave Africa mainly as raw materials while the greater value is created elsewhere.
Africa’s resources have powered global industrialisation
For centuries, Africa’s natural resources have fed industrial development beyond the continent.
The Industrial Revolution created enormous demand for minerals and other commodities. Later, the expansion of manufacturing, transport, telecommunications and modern technology increased that demand.
Yet the pattern remained largely unchanged.
Africa supplied raw materials, while industrial centres elsewhere captured much of the value through processing, manufacturing, technology and finished products.
That model cannot define Africa’s economic future. The transition to a green economy has made the continent’s mineral resources even more strategically important.
Electric vehicles, batteries, renewable-energy systems, electricity grids, digital infrastructure and advanced manufacturing require large quantities of copper, lithium, cobalt, graphite, nickel, manganese and other critical minerals.
The International Energy Agency has highlighted the rapidly expanding market for clean-energy technologies.
Yet Africa captures only a small share of the value generated from manufacturing these technologies and their components, despite supplying significant quantities of the minerals required to produce them.
This contradiction must be at the centre of the COMESA agenda.
The green economy is Africa’s opportunity
The global transition towards cleaner energy is creating a new scramble for critical minerals.
Major economies are seeking secure and reliable supplies because these resources are no longer simply commodities. They have become strategic assets linked to economic competitiveness, technological development and national security.
This presents COMESA with a historic opportunity.
The Democratic Republic of Congo has vast deposits of cobalt and copper. Zambia is a major copper producer. Zimbabwe has emerged as an important lithium producer. Other COMESA countries also possess significant deposits of minerals required by modern industries.
These resources should therefore be treated as instruments of economic diplomacy.
This does not mean COMESA should interfere with the sovereign ownership of mineral resources by member states.
Rather, member States can use the regional bloc to coordinate policies, infrastructure, investment frameworks, skills development and industrial strategies.
The real strength of COMESA will not simply lie in possessing minerals. It will lie in determining how those minerals enter global value chains.
From mineral exporter to industrial powerhouse
COMESA must reject the old economic equation in which Africa exports ore and imports finished products.
The new equation should be minerals for technology, investment, skills, infrastructure, research and industrial capacity.
Where international companies seek access to lithium, cobalt, copper and other strategic resources, African countries should increasingly pursue partnerships that establish processing plants, component industries, battery manufacturing, renewable-energy projects, technology centres and other value-adding industries within the region.
This is the difference between extraction and transformation.
Africa cannot become prosperous simply by increasing the volume of minerals it exports.
Mineral wealth must stimulate manufacturing, create skilled jobs, build technological capacity and establish industries capable of competing in international markets.
COMESA should therefore develop a coordinated mineral-beneficiation strategy that positions the region as a destination for processing and manufacturing rather than merely a source of raw materials.
Such a strategy would also give member states greater bargaining power when negotiating investment deals.
One market must become one economic force
Regional integration is equally important.
Fragmented African markets weaken the continent’s bargaining power and make it difficult for industries to achieve the scale required to compete globally.
High trade costs, cumbersome border procedures, inconsistent standards and inadequate transport infrastructure continue to constrain intra-African commerce.
COMESA must therefore accelerate efforts to build a genuinely integrated regional market.
The African Continental Free Trade Area provides the broader continental framework for achieving this objective by creating a single African market for goods and services.
COMESA’s participation in the Tripartite Free Trade Area involving COMESA, SADC and the East African Community also provides an important opportunity to address the complications arising from overlapping regional memberships. The lesson from other successful regional blocs is clear.
Economic strength increases when national markets are connected, barriers to trade are reduced and businesses can operate across borders with greater ease.
COMESA does not need to copy other blocs mechanically.
It must, however, draw from their central lesson: larger integrated markets create opportunities for economies of scale, industrialisation and investment.
COMESA and SADC can create a powerful economic bridge
The overlap between COMESA and SADC can also become an advantage rather than an institutional complication.
Nine countries belong to both blocs: Comoros, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Eswatini, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Seychelles, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
These countries can serve as a bridge for harmonising trade policies, customs procedures, infrastructure development and investment frameworks.
Such coordination would help create a wider economic corridor linking Eastern and Southern Africa.
Zimbabwe is particularly well positioned to champion this agenda.
Having recently held the SADC chairmanship, Zimbabwe is preparing to assume the COMESA chairmanship. This gives Harare an opportunity to advocate for stronger alignment between regional integration initiatives.
Instead of allowing overlapping institutions to compete for economic space, the region can use them to reinforce one another.
Harare must become the launchpad
The hosting of the COMESA summit gives Zimbabwe an important diplomatic and economic opportunity.
The summit should be more than a ceremonial transfer of the chairmanship.
It should become a strategic turning point in the region’s economic agenda.
As host and incoming chair, Zimbabwe should place mineral beneficiation, regional value chains, technology transfer, infrastructure connectivity, digitalisation and intra-COMESA trade firmly at the centre of discussions.
This also fits into Zimbabwe’s own economic trajectory under President Mnangagwa and the Second Republic, which has placed emphasis on investment, infrastructure development, value addition and industrialisation in pursuit of Vision 2030.
The philosophy “Nyika Inovakwa neVene Vayo/Ilizwe Lakhiwa Ngabanikazi Balo” reinforces the principle that Zimbabwe’s development must be driven by its own people and resources.
Zimbabwe’s experience in developing its lithium industry and attracting investment into mineral processing demonstrates both the opportunities and challenges facing resource-rich African countries.
The country can use the COMESA platform to push for a broader regional conversation on how mineral wealth can finance industrialisation.
The keys to the next world economy are in Africa
The strategic question facing COMESA is no longer whether the region possesses resources capable of attracting global investment.
It does.
The question is whether those resources will be used to transform Africa’s position in the global economy.
The world needs Africa’s minerals for electric vehicles, batteries, renewable-energy systems, electricity networks, digital technologies and advanced manufacturing.
That dependence gives Africa leverage.
But leverage is useless if it is not organised.
COMESA must therefore move beyond being a collection of resource-rich economies and become a coordinated industrial and trading force.
Its minerals should provide the foundation for beneficiation, technology acquisition, regional manufacturing and economic sovereignty.
As Harare prepares to host the summit, the message should be clear: Africa must no longer be merely the quarry for other people’s industrial revolutions.
COMESA has the markets, people, strategic geography and mineral resources to help shape the next one.
The 25th Summit should be the moment when that ambition moves from rhetoric to policy.
Zimbabwe’s chairmanship provides an opportunity to steer the bloc towards an era in which African minerals finance African industrialisation, African markets consume more African products and African states negotiate with the world from a position of greater collective strength.
The future global economy will require Africa. COMESA must ensure that Africa is no longer merely supplying that future.
It must be building it.
