Africa must rethink its place in the global clean revolution

By Galiwayo Henry

The world is rushing toward clean energy, celebrating electric cars, solar batteries and e-mobility as the answer to climate change.

Yet behind the optimism lies a reality Africa knows too well: much of the green revolution depends on dirty, unjust and extractive practices carried out in some of the poorest and least protected regions of the world.

Globally, over 70 percent of the world’s cobalt (which is essential for electric vehicle batteries) comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Recent studies show that 36.8 percent of artisanal miners report forced labour, 9.2 percent are children and thousands earn as little as $3.28 per day, with women earning even less.

These workers inhale toxic dust, dig in unstable tunnels and handle heavy metals with bare hands and yet all these are powering agents of the world’s electric cars and smartphones.

Lithium mining tells a similar story. The saddest reality is the children who trade in these practices-they will never get a chance to go to school and this is a generation of academically dis-empowered people who will be absorbed in communities with unclear survival means in their future.

And the question lingers: what will happen if the current minerals are depleted?

This is the contradiction: the world’s clean future is being built through methods that are far from clean, especially in regions where governance is weak and communities lack protection.

Africa’s resource paradox: Abundance without prosperity

Africa sits at the centre of this new energy race, supplying cobalt, copper, gold, nickel, graphite, rare earths and more. Yet the continent remains positioned as a raw-material exporter, with little value addition and enormous social, ecological and economic costs.

Uganda’s own extractive sector reveals this contradiction. In the artisanal gold mining communities of Mubende (Kitumbi and Bukuya), Kassanda, Karamoja and Buhweju, thousands of miners work without licenses, without training and without protective gear.

UNICEF and Global Rights Alert have documented child miners as young as 12, women working in mercury-contaminated water and families living deeply impoverished lives despite the high value of gold leaving the ground.

In Kasese, decades of copper mining around Kilembe left behind heavy-metal contamination that persists to this day.

Studies have found elevated levels of copper, cobalt and arsenic in soils and rivers, affecting livestock health and local food systems-a toxic legacy of extraction that benefited colonial and foreign companies far more than the communities living there.

Zambia’s copper and gold rush is another example. Zambia is Africa’s second-largest copper producer, yet rural mining towns remain trapped in poverty.

Environmental watchdogs have recorded dangerous sulphur dioxide emissions, polluted water sources and land degradation around smelters. The excitement of small-scale gold mining has brought conflict, child labour, unsafe pits and dangerous chemicals used without regulation.

In Nigeria, the Niger Delta shows how extractive wealth can become a curse when governance collapses. For decades, oil exploitation has generated billions yet left behind poisoned rivers, gas flares, dead farmlands and impoverished communities.

The Niger Delta may be the clearest evidence that Africa’s natural wealth (whether oil or green minerals) can be systematically extracted while local populations remain trapped in ecological ruin.

Across the continent, the pattern repeats: Africa provides the minerals that keep global economies running, yet communities bear the human cost and the environment endures the destruction.

If green development is merely a recoloured version of the same extractive model, Africa will again be left behind engulfed in deeper poverty, pollution and without the industrial capacity to benefit from the clean-energy transition.

Building a just, African-centred green future

This moment demands a different kind of development thinking i.e., one grounded in African realities, African agency and African leadership. Green development must not just be low carbon; it must be just, regenerative and inclusive.

Governments must craft context-specific investment policies, not imported frameworks copied from Europe or Asia.

Local content laws should compel foreign companies to process minerals locally, transfer technology, support local entrepreneurship and reinvest profits into communities.

Strong regulations must end child labour, ensure fair wages and mandate environmental rehabilitation in all mining zones.

Development partners and multinational corporations must abandon the model where Africa provides raw materials and the West or Asia manufactures the high-value products.

Instead, financing should focus on African battery factories, mineral processing centres, research facilities and skills development. Africa cannot afford to remain at the bottom of the green value chain.

Academia must step forward with evidence, technology and foresight.

Our universities must guide policy, innovate cleaner mining methods, strengthen environmental monitoring and develop standards for what qualifies as green in the African context. Green transformation cannot advance without African research and African scientists at its core.

Civil society organisations (CSOs) must remain vigilant, amplifying community voices, exposing abuses and ensuring transparency in mineral contracts.

They are the bridge between government, industry and citizens, in other words, the watchdogs that should ensure green growth does not become green exploitation.

What Africa needs now is sovereignty in the green economy. Sovereignty over its minerals, sovereignty over its policies and sovereignty over its future.

Green development must mean clean rivers in Kasese, safe artisanal miners in Mubende, protected forests in Karamoja, rehabilitated oil fields in Nigeria and fair copper towns in Zambia.

Anything less is simply extractive colonialism painted green.

Africa holds the minerals that power the future.

It must also hold the power to shape how that future unfolds.