Sustainable Mining Emerges As Africa’s Essential Path To A Clean And Equitable Energy Transition

Don’t be fooled, the clean energy transition runs on minerals, and many of the world’s most essential minerals are mined in Africa.

But unless sustainable mining practices scale at the same pace as mineral demand, the transition will deepen inequality rather than deliver climate justice.

Without this, it is just kicking the problem down the road and into someone else’s backyard —ours. And that is not sustainable or clean.

Social and environmental risks

According to the International Energy Agency, global demand for critical minerals will quadruple by 2040, with some materials required to expand thirtyfold.

For the first time, the COP30 draft texts formally acknowledged the role of mineral governance in achieving the Paris Agreement, highlighting the social and environmental risks associated with the rapid expansion of mining for copper, cobalt, lithium, nickel and rare metals.

This inclusion marks a significant shift from previous UNFCCC negotiations, where mineral extraction was largely absent from formal decision-making tracks.

While negotiations in Belém stopped short of a binding roadmap phase-down of fossil fuels, proceedings placed mineral supply chains firmly on the agenda, signalling that the way we source these minerals will increasingly determine the integrity of the global transition.

A recent campaign by global engineering group Sandvik powerfully illustrated this point.

Its eNimon installation stripped an electric vehicle of all metals and mineral components, revealing a non-functional shell.

The message resonates far beyond the mining sector.

Every electric vehicle, solar panel, and wind turbine starts with extraction.

The question is not whether we mine, but how we mine and who pays the price when mining goes wrong.

Across Africa’s mining regions, communities closest to extraction sites continue to face disproportionately high risks, particularly where monitoring is weak or inconsistent.

Those risks include:

• Water contamination and acidification that jeopardise drinking water, agriculture and livestock.
• Tailings dam and geotechnical failures, including this year’s catastrophic incidents in Zambia and the DRC.
• Airborne pollutants, including dust and heavy metals, are harmful to human health.
• Displacement and long-term loss of livelihood.
• Greater climate vulnerability as extreme rainfall increases infrastructure strain.

For example, independent findings showed that the February partial tailings dam collapse near Kitwe, Zambia, may have released 1.5 million tonnes of toxic waste.

The spill, enough to fill over 400 Olympic pools, discharged acid-bearing material into the Mwambashi River before flowing downstream into the Kafue River system, affecting residents of the Kitwe region — the country’s second-most populous urban region.

Heavy metals remain a persistent threat to residents living near the most affected zone.

Similarly, the dam failure earlier this month at a cobalt and copper mine in the DRC, both key transition minerals, has once again highlighted how local communities absorb the environmental shocks of extraction while the global energy transition benefits from the output.

When water, land and livelihoods are affected, the impact is immediate and multigenerational.

These events show exactly what is at stake if sustainable mining does not keep pace with mineral demand.

Encouraging improvements

The ICMM’s latest progress report on the Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management (GISTM) shows encouraging improvements in governance among major operators.

However, GISTM remains voluntary and self-assessed, and large parts of the sector, especially smaller and mid-tier operations, remain outside the framework.

Frameworks like GISTM and the G20’s Critical Minerals Framework are essential foundations, but they need to be supported by real-world implementation.

That begins with data.

Data and AI can help operators stay ahead of the curve.

Real-time monitoring and data-driven decision-making must form the backbone of sustainable mining.

Many mines have static monitoring technologies in place. Still, to truly harness this data's potential, it must integrate across all available sources, such as satellite imagery, IoT sensor networks, plant systems, ground-based monitoring instruments, and publicly available data.

Sustainability is not a once-a-year paper exercise for board reports.

Mines are dynamic, and their monitoring must be dynamic and proactive too.

Without real-time monitoring, mines or indeed any critical infrastructure cannot demonstrate compliance, regulators cannot intervene early, and communities remain in the dark.

Environmental intelligence is the foundation of responsible extraction.

Water monitoring is especially critical, given rising water stress across mining regions and the cross-sectoral impacts of contaminated or mismanaged water.

Whether in mining, agriculture, or energy, water is at the centre of climate resilience.

Mining companies need to treat water as a strategic resource, not a by-product.

Africa holds some of the world’s most essential transition minerals.

With global frameworks gaining attention but implementation lagging, the continent has an opportunity to shape a new model of sustainable extraction — one that leverages transparency, monitoring and community protection as strategic advantages rather than compliance burdens.

There is a real opportunity for Africa to lead the world in what sustainable mining should look like.

If developing communities are asked to shoulder the risks of the clean energy transition, they deserve the highest standards of safety, accountability and remediation.

That is the only way to ensure the transition is both clean and just.