Overview
In this article, I explore which countries in Africa are well positioned for a world in which access to energy and physical resources matters increasingly, and which companies offer the most compelling opportunities from a fundamental and technical standpoint.
We will begin at the continental level, before focusing on the countries and companies that stand out. The focus is on the commodities where I see the strongest long-term opportunities, particularly oil and gas, uranium, and precious and industrial metals.
Background
The commodities bull market is already in full swing. Since 2024, prices across energy, metals and agricultural markets have risen, although the broader market is now approaching a significant resistance level.
Markets respect multi-year resistance levels, so a period of consolidation or correction would not surprise me. However, I think the catalysts driving this cycle will persist through the rest of the decade and eventually push the market through that resistance.
At the beginning of 2026, I argued that gold and silver were benefiting from monetary debasement and geopolitical distrust, while copper, uranium and platinum-group metals were being pulled higher by electrification, rising power demand, defence spending and limited supply.
At the time, my conclusion was:
The metal markets look ripe for a correction, even while the structural trend remains bullish
Metals markets have since corrected, while the bull market remains intact.
I have also been following the energy complex closely, including oil, natural gas, coal and nuclear. In February, I argued that oil and gas appeared undervalued in the short term, with nuclear presenting a longer-term opportunity. Oil and gas prices have since moved sharply higher.
I subsequently argued that the energy shock could spread into agricultural markets, as rising natural gas prices and disrupted fertiliser supplies set the stage for a potential repricing of wheat and corn. Since that article, wheat and corn prices have risen 15% and 6%, respectively.
If these commodities have further upside, the next question is which countries, and which companies within them, are best positioned to benefit.
The Next Question: Where?
I am looking for geographies with access to abundant and affordable energy and strategic resources, alongside the infrastructure, institutions and capital needed to develop them profitably. I am particularly interested in whether each geography can:
Effectively turn underground resources into commercially viable assets.
Create additional value through processing and infrastructure.
Offer investors a practical way to capture that value.
Africa
Africa holds about 30% of the world’s mineral reserves and around 8% of its proven oil and natural-gas reserves. Its mineral wealth includes copper for electricity grids and renewable energy, uranium for nuclear power, and platinum-group metals for vehicles and industrial catalysts.
From Underground Resources to Commercial Assets
Africa is rich in energy and mineral resources, but those resources are spread unevenly. Oil and gas are concentrated in North and West Africa. Gold production is significant across West and Southern Africa, copper is concentrated in Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and South Africa dominates platinum-group metals. Namibia and Niger are important uranium producers, with Namibia alone supplying approximately 12% of global mined uranium in 2024.
Discovery
Despite covering 22% of the world’s landmass, Africa attracted only 10% of global mineral-exploration spending. However, the exploration that occurs has produced more discovery value per dollar than in established mining jurisdictions.
Between 2007 and 2016, Sub-Saharan Africa generated approximately $0.80 in estimated mineral-discovery value for every $1 spent on exploration, compared with $0.60 in Canada, $0.50 in Australia and $0.30 in Latin America.
Infrastructure
To make productive use of these resources, they must be extracted, processed and transported. That requires reliable power, ports, railways, roads and storage, alongside skilled workers, access to capital and predictable institutions.
Transport
Across much of the continent, inadequate roads, railways and ports raise extraction costs, reduce mine profitability and leave some deposits undeveloped.
Africa’s 82,000-kilometre rail network is only slightly larger than India’s 69,400-kilometre network, despite the continent being nine times larger by land area. According to the World Bank, 16% of Africa’s rail infrastructure is entirely non-operational, leaving its usable network roughly the same size as India’s.
Ports present another bottleneck: cargo waits almost three weeks at Sub-Saharan African ports on average, compared with less than one week in several other regions, while handling costs are around 50% higher.
Consequently, 80% to 90% of African freight travels by road, yet only 28% of the continent’s 2.8 million kilometres of roads are paved.
The challenge is particularly acute for landlocked resource producers. In Zambia, where the extractive sector accounted for 77% of exports in 2019, transport expenses have added around 40% to the cost of mining output.
Power
Africa exports energy to the world, while much of the continent still lacks the power needed to process its own resources.
In 2025, Africa generated just 635 kilowatt-hours of electricity per person, around one-sixth of the global average. This reflects both limited access to electricity and the continent’s relatively small industrial power base.
Insufficient supply makes it harder to develop and process resources domestically. Mines, smelters and processing facilities require enormous amounts of reliable power. Where the grid cannot meet their needs, mining companies must absorb the cost of outages or build their own generating capacity.
I expect substantially more investment in electricity generation and transmission across Africa over the next decade, driven by population growth and rising demand from natural resource industries.
China’s Role
China has played the most prominent external role in financing Africa’s infrastructure gap. Between 2000 and 2023, Chinese lenders committed $182 billion to African borrowers, including nearly $53 billion for transport. In 2018 alone, China committed $25.7 billion to African infrastructure, compared with $20.2 billion from the Infrastructure Consortium for Africa, whose members include Western governments and institutions.
China has helped build much of the infrastructure needed to commercialise Africa’s resources, while also securing significant exposure to those resources itself. Chinese state-owned and private companies have become major owners, operators and financiers across African mining, but much of that exposure sits in state-owned groups, private companies or mainland-listed firms that are difficult for Western investors to access directly.
Moving Up the Value Chain
Extracting a resource is only the first step. Countries capture more of its value when they can process it domestically.
Refining Capacity
For generations, Africa has exported lower-value crude oil, paid foreign refiners to process it, and then imported more expensive petrol, diesel and other fuels.
This picture is changing, but it’s a lengthy process. Nigeria’s 650,000-barrel-a-day Dangote refinery, Africa’s largest, is beginning to transform the country into a major producer and exporter of refined fuels. Its journey also illustrates the difficulty involved. The project cost more than $20 billion and took roughly a decade to complete.
Dangote now plans to build a second 700,000-barrel-a-day refinery in Lamu, Kenya, although this remains a proposal and will take years to finance and construct. If completed, it could substantially reduce East Africa’s dependence on imported fuel.
Where Does Value Accrue?
The World Bank estimates that for every $100 of economic rent (the value of resources minus production costs) generated by natural resources in resource-rich Sub-Saharan Africa, governments collect around $38.
The remaining $62 accrues to a combination of domestic and foreign owners, state-owned companies and retained or reinvested earnings, although the precise distribution is difficult to track. Weak governance and corruption can further reduce the extent to which resource wealth benefits the wider population.
During the 2004–14 commodity boom, many resource-rich African countries failed to save or invest a sufficient share of their resource revenues in lasting assets. When commodity prices fell, growth weakened sharply and several countries entered debt crises.
Kamoa-Kakula, one of Africa’s largest copper mines, illustrates how resource value can be divided.
In 2025, the mine generated $3.3 billion in revenue and $1.45 billion in EBITDA. The DRC captures value through its ownership stake, taxes, wages and local economic activity, but foreign-owned companies retain claims on most residual profits after costs and reinvestment.
Countries that stand out
I am looking for countries with valuable energy and mineral resources, the infrastructure to develop them profitably, evidence that resource revenues are strengthening the wider economy, and listed companies that offer a practical way to invest.
Namibia
Namibia is one of the world’s largest uranium producers, supplying 12% of global mined uranium in 2024. Mining is well established, while major offshore oil discoveries since 2022 could eventually broaden the country’s resource base considerably.
What makes Namibia particularly interesting is its ability to commercialise those resources. It combines relative political stability with some of Africa’s stronger transport infrastructure, including motorways, railways and access to the Atlantic through Walvis Bay. The port also connects Namibia to landlocked resource producers in Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, giving the country a wider role as a regional logistics hub.
Namibia’s small population means successful new uranium mines or offshore oil developments could have an outsized impact on the economy. But that is not guaranteed. Water scarcity, dependence on South Africa and persistently high inequality remain important constraints, while much of the existing uranium industry is foreign-owned.
For investors, Namibia’s domestic stock market is small, but its resources are accessible through internationally listed companies. Paladin Energy offers exposure to uranium already in production at Langer Heinrich, while Deep Yellow and Bannerman Energy provide greater development-stage leverage through Tumas and Etango. Andrada Mining offers a separate combination of producing tin and prospective lithium.
Bannerman Energy
BMN 0.00%↑ is one of the most concentrated expressions of the uranium thesis in Namibia. Unlike a diversified producer, almost its entire value rests on Etango: a large, permitted uranium project situated within Namibia’s established Erongo mining district, close to existing infrastructure.
Technically, Bannerman has been building a large consolidation base since 2021. I like these multi-year formations when they coincide with improving fundamentals: rising nuclear-power demand, constrained uranium supply and an established mining jurisdiction with the infrastructure to support development. The narrative is also compelling. Namibian uranium developers remain less obvious investments than other western names, leaving upside room. I’m bullish on this over a three-year timeframe.
South Africa
South Africa was the world’s leading gold producer for much of the 20th century and remains its largest platinum producer, holding approximately 88% of global platinum-group metal reserves.
The largest source of platinum demand comes from catalytic converters, which reduce emissions from petrol and diesel vehicles. Electric vehicles do not require these devices, creating a potential long-term headwind. But like silver, platinum has a dual identity: it is both an industrial metal and a precious metal, meaning demand can also come from investors seeking scarce physical assets.
Unlike many resource-rich African countries, South Africa already possesses an established industrial base, including mines, smelters, refineries, skilled workers and the continent’s largest stock exchange. Mining contributes approximately 7–8% of GDP and accounts for more than half of merchandise exports.
The challenge is that this industrial base has been undermined by unreliable electricity. Mining and smelting consume approximately 30% of South Africa’s electricity, making power shortages particularly damaging. But reforms allowing companies to generate more of their own electricity suggest these constraints are not permanent.
Valterra Platinum ($VAL on JSE)
Valterra Platinum offers one of the clearest expressions of this opportunity. Its operations include Mogalakwena, one of the world’s largest open-pit platinum-group-metal mines, alongside an integrated network of concentrators, smelters and refineries that allows it to capture value beyond extraction.
Mogalakwena is extremely productive. The World Bank found that output per worker at the mechanised mine was approximately 11 times higher than at a conventional platinum operation. In its historical comparison, production costs were approximately $500 per ounce, compared with $900 at the conventional mine.
The platinum thesis rests on constrained supply. Years of weak prices have discouraged investment, forced production cuts and depleted inventories. Electric vehicles remain a long-term threat to catalytic-converter demand, but petrol vehicles, hybrids and plug-in hybrids are likely to remain important for longer than the market once expected. Platinum can also gain demand through substitution for palladium, jewellery and investment. In an already tight market, demand may only need to remain resilient for deficits to persist.
Valterra therefore combines exposure to a constrained PGM market with the advantages of a modern, integrated and relatively low-cost producer.
Technically, the shares have been forming a rounded base since 2023, which I like when it coincides with improving fundamentals. However, the 2025 rally in metal prices and earnings has already driven a substantial rerating, and the stock has already jumped 20% while I was writing this article! Nevertheless, I like this too, over a three-year timeframe.
Zambia
Zambia is one of Africa’s most important copper producers. Copper already accounts for more than 70% of export earnings, while electrification, grid expansion and data-centre construction are increasing the strategic importance of the metal globally.
Zambia has been mining copper industrially for almost a century and already possesses large deposits, experienced workers, concentrators, smelters and an established mining industry. Its problem is that this potential has repeatedly been constrained by unreliable electricity, difficult transport links and inconsistent policy. As a landlocked country, these bottlenecks have an unusually large influence on whether deposits can be developed profitably.
There are signs this is beginning to improve. Copper production rose 8% to a record of almost 890,000 tonnes in 2025, despite severe electricity shortages, and the government expects production to exceed one million tonnes in 2026. Its much more ambitious target is three million tonnes annually by 2031.
The political backdrop has also become more supportive. President Hakainde Hichilema was re-elected for another five-year term in August 2026 after several years spent restructuring Zambia’s debt and attempting to restore investor confidence. His government is simultaneously trying to capture more value from the mining industry rather than simply exporting greater volumes of raw material, including through domestic processing, state participation and plans for a pan-African metals exchange.
Execution remains the key risk. Zambia still relies heavily on hydropower, leaving electricity generation vulnerable to drought, while previous attempts to move further down the copper value chain have progressed slowly. The opportunity is therefore not that these problems have disappeared, but that an established copper industry may be entering a period of renewed investment while some of its largest constraints gradually ease.
First Quantum Minerals ($FM on TSX)
First Quantum provides one of the clearest listed expressions of this thesis and accounts for almost half of Zambia’s copper production. Its principal Zambian assets are Kansanshi, a large copper-and-gold mine with an integrated smelter, and Sentinel, a modern open-pit copper mine built for approximately $2.1 billion. The company also operates the nearby Enterprise nickel mine. Together, Kansanshi and Sentinel produced approximately 370,000 tonnes of copper in 2025, representing around 93% of First Quantum’s total production.
Power illustrates both the opportunity and the constraint. During the second quarter of 2026, only around 20% of First Quantum’s Zambian electricity came from state utility ZESCO, with the remainder sourced from imports and independent producers. First Quantum has therefore been able to keep producing despite Zambia’s electricity shortages, but at the cost of greater complexity and dependence on external supply.
The major complication lies outside Zambia. Cobre Panamá, formerly First Quantum’s largest mine, has been suspended since 2023. A reopening would materially improve the company’s financial position, but would also make First Quantum a less concentrated Zambia investment. For now, the company remains one of the most direct ways to gain listed exposure to Zambia’s attempt to substantially expand copper production.
Technically, First Quantum is attempting to break above a major resistance zone around C$45–48, an area that has capped the shares several times since 2022. Below that, the C$25–30 region has acted as an important long-term pivot and now provides a substantial area of support. A sustained breakout above the recent highs would leave the stock trading at levels not seen for more than a decade and would strengthen the longer-term bullish setup.
Conclusion
Africa clearly has the resources the world increasingly needs. The harder question is whether those resources can be developed profitably, processed locally and translated into returns that investors can actually access.
That is where the differences between countries become important. Namibia combines uranium and emerging offshore oil with relatively strong infrastructure and institutions. South Africa already has a deep mining and processing base that could benefit materially if its power constraints continue to ease. Zambia offers one of the clearest copper opportunities, with production already rising and significant upside if electricity and transport bottlenecks improve.
The broader opportunity may therefore be less about simply owning exposure to commodities, and more about identifying the countries and companies where resource abundance is becoming commercially investable.