Introduction
The global energy transition depends on secure and sustainable access to critical minerals, which are essential for renewable energy technologies, digital infrastructure, and national defense. Yet these supply chains are highly vulnerable to geopolitical tensions, as no single country possesses all the resources it requires. This makes the governance of critical minerals not only an economic priority but also a strategic imperative for international stability.
The G20 is uniquely positioned to address these challenges by brokering agreements that prevent politically instigated market failures, such as trade restrictions or supply disruptions, and by fostering cooperation among major economies that might otherwise compete for access. International economic institutions are central in this effort, as they can expand supply, allow efficient access, and implement governance principles that balance national interests with collective needs.
South Africa’s presidency of the G20 in 2025 presents both opportunities and risks. The government aims to advance continental value-capture by promoting beneficiation, value-addition, job creation, and higher export revenues—efforts that respond directly to African development priorities. At the same time, these ambitions face obstacles, including high processing costs and ongoing Western demand for raw materials. The South African government’s focus on repairing relations with the United States to secure participation at the summit may also detract from the larger task of balancing diverse member-state interests.
This article argues that meaningful progress will require South Africa to steer the agenda toward common governance principles, financial support for exploration, and investment in infrastructure. It identifies five priority areas for action and highlights the importance of new production frontiers. Ultimately, South Africa must aim for targeted yet strategic progress on critical minerals, taking into account both current geopolitical tensions and historical precedent within the G20.
The Convening Power of the G20
There are two central market failures in critical minerals production that make supply chains vulnerable and may necessitate state intervention. First, the political value placed on materials derives from their economic and military utility. Problematically, this is disconnected from price functions, and thus exploration and production incentives, which are volatile and subject to a range of factors (e.g., resource distribution, limited current demand, and projected future needs under electric vehicle and green-energy policies). The concentration of processing reflects the second market failure: processing is not universally profitable and relies on the availability of skills, energy, and offtake at scale to be economically viable.
The G20 membership represents 85 percent of global GDP but encompasses divergent economic ideologies and national strategic aspirations. Western nations are relying on market incentives and the private sector to mitigate supply chain vulnerabilities and chokepoint risks, while producer nations in the developing world often must coordinate the two. G20 governance principles must reflect the reality that supply chains are highly complex and must supply the myriad inputs for manufactured products.
The G20’s advantage is that it sits above divisive alliances (such as the predominantly G7-led Minerals Security Partnership), includes a wide range of partners, and can facilitate discussion on protecting both equitable access to minerals and global benefit from them.
South Africa’s G20 presidency has prioritized critical minerals within the task force on inclusive economic growth, employment, industrialization, and reduced inequality. The eventual placement within economic growth was a move by South Africa to enable it to push issues of beneficiation and equitable benefit accumulation for producer nations in the Global South. Regional convenings to agree upon an African view have been met with scepticism about whether South Africa is representing the continent or itself. South Africa has also had to contend with pursuing its G20 presidency on a tight budget, often leading to administrative and operational challenges within its workstreams.
Despite these challenges, the November 2025 summit offers a vital opportunity for agreement between competing players to uphold principles of responsible sourcing and prevent mutually harmful market restrictions or activities.
Five Areas of Concern
Scope of criticality
A fundamental starting point is that the G20 needs a shared understanding of what constitutes criticality. Within the literature, conceptualizations of criticality fall into two broad categories, as defined by the Intergovernmental Forum: mid- and downstream stakeholders prioritize access to economically or security-important inputs, while upstream suppliers emphasize national or commercial reliance on their production and value capture when a country has a strategic interest in leveraging its dominant position in production or processing to gain a competitive advantage in the global supply chain.
Since different members’ strategies presuppose distinct minerals, the G20 has two prevailing options: look for common minerals, such as graphite or manganese, or advocate for a flexible, criteria-centric definition. The latter would provide the most practical solution to ensure the broadest applications of G20 principles and governance.
Recycled and recovered metals and minerals would be an important inclusion in the G20 discussion in South Africa. An agreement could include how recycling may determine criticality, as it offers value capture and is of equal economic significance for a country as extraction.
Trade and pricing
The second area of concern is stabilizing prices and reducing futile government interventions that impede global supply. G20 partners need to agree on acceptable limits on interventions that deliberately destabilize global markets.
Export restrictions and intentional price manipulation are counterproductive. China’s past export controls in June prompted Western efforts to implement strategies to secure supply. There are undoubtedly economic and security implications to what could amount to global shortages of materials this year in the wake of the ban. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a ban on exporting unprocessed cobalt was imposed following the government’s concern that foreign operators’ overproduction was driving down prices and reducing potential revenue.
The overlay of geopolitical forces on market dynamics has been a challenge for the G20 in adequately addressing tensions between distinct national interests. Different national factors determining criticality are inherently contradictory, but some political agreement is possible to limit interventions that undermine supply and prices, particularly for international operators in developing countries.
Exploration
The 2025 G20 will see South Africa pushing for an agreement to increase global exploration financing, particularly Africa’s stake in the activity. A G20 exploration fund could be a vital shared resource for member nations, including those with access through regional representation via the African Union and European Union. It would open new areas for extraction and expedite discovery-to-production timelines through advanced geological mapping.
Such a fund would need to address a few concerns, namely the low proportion of global exploration finance that goes to Africa due to perceptions of political risk, in addition to significant infrastructure and energy deficits. A G20 exploration fund could complement other initiatives that are seeking to overcome these challenges, such as the EU Global Gateway, a financing strategy that targets energy and infrastructure projects to unlock mineral potential. Data and information-sharing principles and governance are needed to protect commercially sensitive geological information.
A G20 exploration fund could also be set up to encourage tailings processing—extracting material from waste dumps—and recycling. The advancement or construction of these operations in emerging nations could provide a vital alternative and sustainable means of international supply and local value capture.
Principles
At the Indian G20 in 2023, four key principles were proposed for accelerating critical mineral value chains: a commitment to reliable, responsible, and sustainable value chains; collaboration on alternative technologies and minerals; value creation and beneficiation at source, technology sharing and skills development; and scaling the recovery and re-use of critical minerals.
South Africa’s presidency can develop clearer pathways for implementing these principles. One method is to set demand signals by key regulators on the expectations of operators to abide by existing international agreements. This includes the integration of high-level agreements (e.g., the UN Panel on Critical Minerals) that cover responsible sourcing and its implementation, restrictions on using mineral rents for armed conflict, and environmental protection. The G20 has a role in encouraging the implementation of existing mechanisms and identifying complementarity between national standards, rather than seeking to establish additional criteria.
Furthermore, the G20 needs a deeper awareness of the costs of developing processing, where it can be located, and, most significantly for African nations, how to maximize value capture from primary extraction. South African efforts could better push toward energy and infrastructure support than pure beneficiation demands.
Finally, the G20 needs to promote the advancement and implementation of traceability to ensure G20 principles are met. While traceability of mineral supplies is currently a significant challenge, it is vital to support provenance claims on the geography of production, transformation, transportation, and trade of materials, and adherence to international standards by the custodial entities along the supply chains. This is critical in mitigating the risks of criminality and conflict within legitimate supply chains.
Territory
The prioritization of African mining ambitions within the South African G20 presidency means that the working group agenda reflects the industry on the continent rather than its international trajectory and territorial challenges. Jobs, value addition, and protecting vulnerable communities are economically and morally important issues for the continent, but so too are the emergence of minerals for security deals—for example, Russian physical security support for West African military leaders in exchange for mining concessions, or the proposed American deals with DRC and Rwanda that could underpin a regional peace agreement. Furthermore, inter-state competition for access to minerals is already leading to territorial conflicts, with national forces or proxies seeking to take and hold ground to access minerals.
Technological advancement means that seabed mining is now a significant commercially viable opportunity. Africa has a coastline of around twenty thousand miles, includes several island states, and has some seabed mining already, such as Namdeb diamond mining in Namibia. However, many countries face significant challenges in governing their maritime space and even in exerting control over their exclusive economic zones. Debates on the sustainability and governance of deep-sea mining are likely to intensify.
Conclusion
The politicization of critical minerals supply chains is reshaping the global economy, underscoring both the urgency and complexity of G20 engagement. To respond effectively, the G20 must advance practical measures: establishing a dedicated exploration fund, formalizing agreements on information sharing and financing, aligning implementation of G20 principles with existing international standards, and placing circularity at the center of its approach to critical minerals.
South Africa’s presidency brings needed attention to African priorities, particularly beneficiation and value addition. Yet consensus will only be possible through pragmatic compromise among diverse member interests. Success will depend on South Africa’s ability to secure baseline agreement around three goals: integrating African producers into global value chains, committing regulators to responsible sourcing standards, and unlocking financing for infrastructure and energy that enable sustainable industry growth.
If South Africa can use its presidency to anchor progress on these fronts, the 2025 G20 summit could mark an important step toward building mineral supply chains that are resilient, responsible, and equitable.
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Christopher Vandome is a Senior Research Fellow with the Africa Programme and the Global Economics and Finance Programme at Chatham House, where he directs the institute’s Critical Mineral Initiative as well as leads the work on Southern Africa and Africa’s natural resource governance and environmental management. He is a PhD candidate at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, writing on mining investment in Botswana, DRC, and Zambia.
Image Credit: GovernmentZA, CC BY-ND 2.0, via Flickr
