Guinea has banned the export of unrefined gold, following a similar move by Zimbabwe regarding lithium exports . President General Mamady Doumbouya announced the policy after consultations with gold producers and buyers, declaring that “Guinea will now require its gold to be processed within its own borders. Raw gold will no longer leave Guinea” .
Any operator violating the ban will face license suspension and termination of their mining contracts .
This is a declaration of economic sovereignty.
Guinea is Africa’s sixth largest gold producer, shipping more than 22 tonnes of the metal in the first quarter of this year . A new refinery is near completion in the capital, Conakry, with a reported capacity of 250 tonnes a year . The country has decided: our gold will be processed here. Our jobs will be created here. Our wealth will stay here.
And Guinea is not alone.
The military regimes in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger have joined the growing tide of resource nationalist policies.
In Mali, a new mining law (2023) increased state and local ownership in mining operations from 20 percent to as much as 35 percent . The government expects an increase in annual mining revenues of 50 percent.
In Burkina Faso, the authorities revoked several mining licences and took control of two major gold mines . They adopted a new mining code in 2024 that increased the state’s equity stake in new mining projects from 10 to 15 percent at no cost to the state, eliminated previously granted tax and customs exemptions, and introduced broader state oversight.
In Niger, the junta nationalized Somaïr, the country’s largest uranium mine operated by French state-owned company Orano. Accusing Orano of “irresponsible, illegal and disloyal behaviour,” the government seized 1,000 tonnes of uranium stockpiles with an estimated market value of EUR 250 million . Niger also revoked mining licences held by Canadian companies and nationalized the Samira Hill gold mine in August 2025.
The pattern is unmistakable. Across the Sahel, African leaders are taking back control of their resources. They are refusing to be mere suppliers of raw materials to foreign corporations. They are insisting that the wealth beneath their soil must benefit the people above it.
In May 2026, Zimbabwe formally classified 14 minerals as “critical” and banned the export of all raw or unbeneficiated forms . Mines Minister Dr Polite Kambamura signed the declaration, ending months of ad hoc directives and giving investors the first comprehensive written strategy for the country’s resource wealth.
The timing was no accident. First-quarter data showed that Zimbabwe’s lithium revenue jumped 106 percent on virtually no volume growth. The country earned US$178.6 million on 240,826 tonnes of lithium exports, just a 2 percent volume increase but a 106 percent value jump.
The state is now demanding mandatory minimum shareholding in the exploitation of all listed critical minerals through designated Special Purpose Vehicles. This is the model that transformed Indonesia into a nickel-processing powerhouse.
As Kambamura put it: “The era of shipping raw rock for marginal returns is over”.
This awakening is not happening in a vacuum.
Russian state-aligned actors are systematically weaponizing resource grievances to advance geopolitical objectives. A coordinated, multilingual narrative attack campaign is running across African mineral-producing regions, targeting cobalt in DRC, gold in Mali and Burkina Faso, and uranium in Niger.
The goal is To discredit Western partners and clear space for Russian influence .
A claim that Burkina Faso earned $18 billion in gold revenue under junta leader Ibrahim Traoré generated over 122,000 engagements, with no supporting data. Bot-like accounts amplified the post in staggered bursts to simulate consensus. Russian state-owned media amplified narratives about Niger’s nationalization of the Somair uranium mine, generating nearly 1,000 engagements .
These narratives do not operate in isolation. They draw on deeply rooted grievances—colonial extraction, unfulfilled sovereignty, exploitative supply chains—and amplify them to serve Russian geopolitical objectives . They reinforce a broader meta-narrative: that Africa’s mineral wealth has long been stolen by the West, and that true sovereignty requires the expulsion of Western actors.
While Guinea bans raw gold exports, Nigeria is celebrating the launch of the EMERGE programme, a grant initiative to fund mineral exploration and research.
The Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Dele Alake, proudly announced that the sector’s revenue grew from N16 billion in 2023 to N70 billion in 2025, a 337 percent increase. He declared that “for the first time in Nigeria’s history, dedicated grants would be available to support geoscience and mineral-processing research”.
And I am supposed to applaud?
What Nigeria is doing is not resource nationalism. It is resource begging.
We are not banning raw exports. We are not demanding local processing. We are not insisting that our wealth benefit our people. We are giving grants to research while the world passes us by.
Let me be clear: the EMERGE programme is not the problem. The problem is that Nigeria is doing the minimum while other African nations are doing the maximum.
Guinea builds a refinery and bans raw gold exports.
Zimbabwe bans raw lithium exports and demands local processing.
Mali increases state ownership in mining operations to 35 percent.
Niger nationalizes uranium mines.
Nigeria launches a grant programme.
This is the tragedy of Nigeria under Tinubu.
At a time when Africa is rising, when leaders across the continent are asserting sovereignty, demanding value addition, and refusing to be pawns in the global resource game, Nigeria is saddled with a president who is more interested in looting and acting out the script given to him by the empire.
The IMF tells him to tax the poor. He taxes them. The World Bank tells him to borrow. He borrows. The US tells him to cooperate. He cooperates. The international community tells him to open the economy. He opens it.
He is not a president. He is a caretaker. A caretaker for a system that does not love Nigeria, does not serve Nigeria, and does not want Nigeria to succeed.
Meanwhile, Africa is matching forward.
Guinea, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Zimbabwe -these countries are not waiting for permission. They are not begging the West for approval. They are taking what is theirs and building what is theirs.
And Nigeria? Nigeria is stuck in a PowerPoint presentation, celebrating grants while other nations build refineries.
The question is not whether Nigeria can join this awakening.
The question is: will we ever get a leader who wants to?
Because the resources are there. Nigeria has gold, lithium, rare earth minerals, oil, gas, enough wealth to transform the continent. But we do not have the leadership to do anything with it.
We have a president who treats governance like a PR exercise. Who spends more time junketing than building industries. Who borrows the country into oblivion while his allies loot the treasury.
We have a president who is not interested in Nigerian sovereignty, because he has none of his own.
Across Africa, a new wave of resource nationalism is sweeping the continent. Countries are asserting control over their resources, demanding local processing, and refusing to be mere suppliers of raw materials.
The rest of Africa is rising. Nigeria is sleeping. And the man at the wheel is not a leader, he is a puppet. A puppet who is more interested in looting than building, more interested in acting out the empire’s script than writing his own.
The awakening is coming. It is coming to Africa.
But it will not come to Nigeria until we have a leader who is not for sale.