By Kingsley Bensons
Africa’s long-standing dependence on raw material exports came under sharp scrutiny at the Mining Indaba 2026, as Alhaji Abdul Samad Rabiu, Founder and Executive chairman of BUA Group, urged the continent to rethink how it uses its vast natural endowments.
Speaking as Special Guest of Honour at an Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) forum, Alhaji Rabiu called for a decisive shift away from extraction toward large scale industrial processing and value addition.
His message was direct. Africa, he argued, is not poor in resources but poor in conversion. The continent supplies the world with minerals and agricultural commodities, yet captures only a small fraction of the value created further down the chain. Until this imbalance is corrected, growth will remain fragile and external dependent.
The forum, held on the sidelines of the Mining Indaba, brought together African leaders, policymakers, financiers and industry executives to examine how mining, industry and real sector development can drive long term prosperity. Alhaji Rabiu used the platform to commend the role of the Africa Finance Corporation in mobilising patient capital for industrial projects. He noted that the institution’s recent S&P Global rating with a positive outlook underscored the importance of credible development finance institutions in shaping Africa’s growth path.
Drawing from experience rather than theory, Alhaji Rabiu recounted BUA Group’s decision over 16 years ago to abandon cement importation in favour of local production in Nigeria. At the time, the country was importing cement despite abundant limestone reserves. According to him, the business environment rewarded trading over production, largely because of capital constraints and long gestation periods in heavy industry.
“We were spending more time chasing foreign exchange than selling cement,” he said. The real issue, he explained, was not the absence of raw materials but the lack of conviction to stop importing and start building domestic capacity.
Today, that decision defines BUA’s industrial footprint. The group mines and processes about 40,000 tonnes of limestone daily and produces roughly one million tonnes of cement every month. This shift helped Nigeria move from a cement importing nation to a net exporter, saving billions of dollars in foreign exchange annually and strengthening the country’s industrial base.
Alhaji Rabiu stressed that such a transition would not have been possible without access to long term financing from development finance institutions. He revealed that the AFC had supported BUA’s cement and industrial operations with over 400 million dollars in financing. A significant portion of those facilities, he added, had already been repaid, demonstrating that well-structured African industrial projects can be both developmental and commercially viable.
Beyond Nigeria, he pointed to what he described as a structural paradox across the continent. Africa remains one of the most resource rich regions globally, yet exports most of its minerals and crops in raw or minimally processed form. Gold, cobalt, copper, iron ore, diamonds and cocoa were among the examples he cited. While Africa supplies the inputs, value is created elsewhere.
“Africa does not lack resources,” Alhaji Rabiu said. “What it lacks is processing capacity, industrial scale and disciplined execution.”
The same challenge, he noted, extends into agriculture. Despite holding a large share of the world’s arable land, Africa continues to import billions of dollars’ worth of food each year. For him, this reflects policy and financing gaps rather than natural constraints.
He called for coordinated action among governments, development finance institutions and the private sector. DFIs, he argued, must scale long term financing targeted at beneficiation and industrial value chains. Governments, in turn, must adopt deliberate policies that incentivise local processing while investing in power, transport and industrial infrastructure.
“Industrialisation does not happen by accident,” Alhaji Rabiu said. “Countries that industrialised did so by design, not by chance. Africa must do the same.”
His remarks framed industrialisation not as an abstract ambition but as a practical pathway from extraction to transformation. By aligning private enterprise, patient capital and supportive policy, Alhaji Rabiu argued, Africa can move from exporting potential to building shared prosperity, anchoring growth in factories, skills and value created at home.
