WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala told the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday that surging global demand for critical minerals has too easily triggered violence and poverty, even as major economies race to use those supplies as leverage. The minerals that power smartphones, fighter jets and the rest of the high-tech machine are being treated as strategic assets, and the people living on top of them are paying the price.
Who Gets Crushed
Antonio Guterres said the scramble for lithium, cobalt, nickel and rare earths has already helped armed groups profit from illegal mining and mineral smuggling in eastern Congo, where “civilians have paid the price of ongoing conflict.” In Sudan, he said, the fight between government and paramilitary forces for political and territorial dominance has been fueled by the exploitation of natural resources, especially gold and gum arabic used in printing, paints, glues, cosmetics and other industries, “leading to atrocities and displacing millions.”
That’s the hierarchy in plain sight. The minerals move. The profits move. The violence stays behind.
Okonjo-Iweala said critical minerals are “increasingly viewed as strategic assets, not just commodities, and a major source of interstate competition.” She warned that this competition creates a real risk that conflicts will rise and developing economies will be locked into the lowest level of production, while “the highest value jobs, technologies and profits go elsewhere.” The arrangement is familiar: raw materials leave, value gets captured elsewhere, and the countries sitting on the deposits are left with the scraps.
What They Call Opportunity
Okonjo-Iweala called the moment “a once-in-a-lifetime chance” for resource-rich countries in Africa and elsewhere to harness wealth and improve life for millions. She said there is a real opportunity to create “a more diversified, inclusive, and win-win global economy” where mineral wealth is not just extracted and shaped abroad but becomes a catalyst for economic transformation.
She also said, “The minerals beneath Africa or any developing region’s soil should never help to finance the conflicts above it.” That line lands hard because the system around these minerals already does exactly that in places like eastern Congo and Sudan, where extraction and armed power feed each other.
Okonjo-Iweala laid out three priorities. Resource-rich developing countries should demand more local processing, refining and “value addition.” The international rule of law should be strengthened. Resource-rich countries should work together and use the leverage they have to reverse the export of raw materials and import of finished goods as well as promote investment.
The Numbers Behind the Scramble
She told the council that “the world cannot achieve energy security, the green transition or digital transformation without them.” Africa alone has roughly 30% of the world’s critical minerals, and less than half of its mineral reserves have been explored, she said. Congo accounts for over 70% of global cobalt production. South Africa holds the world’s largest reserves of platinum and manganese. Zambia and Congo are major copper producers. She also said between 10 and 12 African countries have commercially exploitable reserves of lithium, and 15 to 20 have commercially exploitable deposits of rare earths.
Those figures explain why the powerful are circling. They also explain why the people living amid the mines, the smuggling routes and the armed checkpoints keep getting squeezed from below while the profits and decision-making sit elsewhere.
The council heard a familiar promise of reform, cooperation and better rules. But the facts on the ground that Guterres described — armed groups, illegal mining, smuggling, atrocities and displacement — show how quickly resource wealth becomes a tool of domination when states, militaries and corporate interests get their hands on it.