African countries are working towards a single continental database of raw materials, a step the Raw Materials Research and Development Council (RMRDC) says will make it easier for investors to find opportunities across the continent. The council’s Director-General, Prof. Nnanyelugo Ike-Muonso, disclosed this on Tuesday at the close of the second Africa Raw Materials Summit in Abuja. He said participants also resolved to prioritise raw materials information systems and to set up an independent secretariat to drive the summit’s agenda.
According to Ike-Muonso, the database would bring together information on raw materials, investors, producers and other stakeholders from different African countries in one place. He said this would help investors identify opportunities that are often scattered or difficult to access. The proposed secretariat, he added, would keep the summit’s resolutions alive between editions and coordinate their implementation across member countries.
The two-day summit, held on October 19 and 20 at the Abuja Continental Hotel, carried the theme “From African Feedstock to African Factories”. The council had said before the event that it expected about 1,800 delegates. It was the second edition after the maiden summit, also held in Abuja, in May 2025.
Kenya will host the third edition, taking the summit outside West Africa for the first time. Ike-Muonso said the decision followed the growing presence of South African participants and others from outside the region. “So, we feel that we should start from Kenya,” he said, describing the Abuja edition as an improvement on the first.
The figures behind the push are stark. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), in its State of Commodity Dependence 2025 report, found that 46 of Africa’s 54 countries, or 85 per cent, were commodity dependent between 2021 and 2023. Under UNCTAD’s definition, that means commodities make up more than 60 per cent of a country’s merchandise exports. In Middle and Western Africa, every single country fell into that category.
Yet heavy dependence has not translated into a large share of global trade. Africa accounted for only 6.6 per cent of world commodity exports in the period, according to the UNCTAD report, against 37.1 per cent for Asia and Oceania. The continent’s total earnings from commodity exports also fell by more than $25 billion compared with a decade earlier.
The choice of Kenya as the next host brings the summit to a region with its own exposure. UNCTAD found that 15 of 18 countries in Eastern Africa, or 83 per cent, were commodity dependent over the same period. Moving the summit eastward could test whether the resolutions agreed in Abuja attract support beyond Nigeria’s immediate neighbourhood.
Nigeria’s own numbers illustrate the problem the summit set out to address. UNCTAD data put commodities at 96.3 per cent of the country’s merchandise exports, with energy alone accounting for 89.7 per cent, agriculture 4.0 per cent and mining 2.6 per cent. Ike-Muonso has separately put the value of Nigeria’s documented non-renewable natural resources at more than $582.4 billion.
The RMRDC chief has argued throughout the build-up that Africa exports raw materials with little processing, then imports finished goods at much higher cost. At the summit, he said Nigeria was the only African country with a government agency fully dedicated to adding value to raw materials, and urged other countries to create similar structures. The RMRDC, established in 1987, operates under the Federal Ministry of Innovation, Science and Technology.
At home, the council is championing a bill that would make 30 per cent local value addition compulsory before raw materials are exported. Ike-Muonso said early this month that the bill was awaiting presidential assent. He projected that it would generate more than 1.2 million skilled jobs within five years and save foreign exchange through import substitution.
Several questions remain open. Ike-Muonso did not give a timeline, a funding arrangement or a host location for the proposed database and secretariat in his remarks. It is also not yet clear how many governments have formally committed to the plan.
The RMRDC chief had challenged delegates at the opening to judge the summit by the investments mobilised, projects implemented, jobs created and quantities of raw materials processed locally. Those are the measures he set for the Abuja edition. Delegates are expected to review progress on them when the summit reconvenes in Kenya.