Host: This week on Limitless Africa, we’re diving into the hidden materials powering the modern world: rare earth minerals.
Ben Kincaid: They’re the tiny ingredients essential for transitioning energy into movement.
Host: Platinum. Cobalt. Lithium. Bauxite. Copper… They’re inside your smartphone, your electric car, your solar panels — even satellites and rockets.
Ben: All the little things that need to make the cellphone in your pocket work to ensuring that submarines power deep beneath the sea.
Host: They’re not actually rare because not many of them exist — they’re rare because they’re hard to extract efficiently.
Right now, China supplies nearly two-thirds of the world’s rare minerals. But global demand is exploding — expected to quadruple by 2030. And as that demand grows, all roads are pointing toward Africa.
But here’s the real question: Who really benefits from Africa’s resources?
Derrick Roper: The US or Europe or Japan or China, they need their African resources. you know They need our platinum, they need our rare earths, they need our gold. So yeah I think in the end there’s huge opportunities for these different countries to work together on a global scale.
Host: For decades, raw materials have been pulled from African soil, shipped overseas, refined elsewhere — and sold back to the world at enormous value. But what if that value stayed on the continent? What if Africa wasn’t just mining the future, but manufacturing it?
Refineries. Manufacturing hubs. Skilled jobs. Entire value chains built at home.
That’s why today, we’re speaking with two people who are reimagining the future of mining in Africa — and challenging the way the world thinks about African resources.
Ben: Well, listen, I mean, we all hear the horror stories of runoff from mines and when materials aren’t handled properly and you have spillage into lakes or rivers. A recent one last year was Zambia, and I believe that was a Chinese project. I mean, we’ve all heard the horrible stories of miners in Congo and other places getting paid almost nothing in awful conditions and all of that just can’t happen.
Host: Ben Kincaid is a former US diplomat who is now the CEO of ReElement Africa, a company who are re-thinking the entire process of mining. He spoke to Claude.
Claude: Can you tell me a little about what you are doing at Re-Element? What’s so special about your technology? And actually, what’s the plan?
Ben: What makes our technology special is that we can refine using a fraction of the chemicals, a fraction of the water needed, a fraction of the energy needed, and and we don’t need to build out massive you know multiple football field size facilities to reach economies of of scale and be able to produce refined minerals cost effectively or economically.
So what that means is we can take our technology, co-locate close to where minerals are mined in Africa, for example, and then we, one, drive down the logistics and transport cost, and two, we work with partners in Africa to help them capture more value from their mining resource, which means they don’t have to then send the mine material offshore to be processed thousands of miles away,
So the technology comes from Purdue University. We’ve got a fantastic partnership with the chemical engineering department there and really represents the best of American innovation.
Host: We’re now going to meet Derrick Roper, who’s part of Novare Holdings, one of the main financial backers of ReElement.The South African investment firm invested 150 million dollars in the American company.
Derrick Roper: I am South Africa, born and bred in South Africa, and I’m a qualified actuary. I used to work for one of the large insurance companies in South Africa up until about 2000 when I left them to start Novare. So yes, passion for Africa, do a lot in Africa, and excited for the opportunities.
Claude: And that leads us to ReElement technologies. Can you tell us who they are and why you ended up investing in them?
Derrick Roper: We’ve been involved in green energy for quite some time, looking at opportunities in Africa, be it solar or other green energy solutions.
And probably about 18 months ago, i was introduced to Re-elements by a colleague of mine from the U.S. who mentioned the company and mentioned that they’ve got you know some very unique technology that has been developed in refining these minerals and that this company was very keen to bring this technology to Africa to be able to deploy it here and to add value in Africa and not like many other resources that’s put on ah on a train taken to a harbor in Africa and then shipped to other parts of the world where it’s been refined.
Claude: Why would an African private equity firm, or investment firm, we’ll call it, want to invest in an American company, especially when we consider that in phase one, ReElement is going to be building a factory in Indiana, which is in the U.S?
Derrick: The major idea is to bring this technology of theirs to Africa and to be able to do the refining in Africa and then to develop these refining facilities in Africa.
We’re also looking at potentially developing a facility in Angola on the Lobito corridor. And then we’re also looking at developing a facility in West Africa.
MUSIC FROM MZWAA ‘CAUGHT UP’
Claude: So why should African countries be looking to process these minerals at home? What does this actually mean? What’s the difference between doing it at home in, say, South Africa, Guinea, DRC, versus doing it elsewhere?
Ben: Yeah, great great question, Claude. And yeah it’s a world of difference. And so yeah the status quo is that you have mining operations, ah some of them very professional that employ you know local workers and have trained them. Some of them, not professional, artisanal miners that are working with companies and traders to aggregate material that then gets put into cargo containers and shipped overseas, primarily to China for processing.
But processing on the continent, you can do that in Africa, employ more people, upskill the labor through training programs so that they learn the trade of everything that goes into the metallurgy and the chemical engineering of processing.
And then, you know, once you are processing those minerals to that high purity grade, they’re manufacturing grade ah ready.
And so that then means you’ve got a much more valuable product. that you’re exporting into Western markets primarily and I think that’ll be the next step. But the real game changer, I think, will be probably still a few years off. And that is once you’re able to process these minerals into manufacturing grade in into manufacturing grade material,
you’re going to invite more manufacturers to come to Africa so that they you know shorten their their value chain, their supply chain, and co-locate close to the refiners so that they can offtake that refined material right there in Africa, whether that’s DRC or South Africa or Guinea, like you mentioned, Claude.
Claude: You’ve said that you’ve invested in Africa, but also in Europe and Asia. Is there anything about the American mindset that is really appealing to you from an investment perspective? I mean, you’ve talked about the availability of capital in the United States, but is there anything about the way that Americans do business that really works for Novare and what you’re building?
Derrick: I really believe in the entrepreneurship of the U.S. economy and the opportunities that that creates, it’s really an entrepreneurial environment that creates that that one probably needs more of in Africa. It’s also you know doing things quickly on a decision-making point of view, off an implementation point of view. and just obviously, the U.S. thinks big, you know which I think is important as well, is critical and how one can really become a global leader in in in your field, you know, and I think that’s something that the U.S.has shown us. They’ve built global leaders in in in in many many different areas. And then, yeah, I think in the end of the day, I think the U.S. has also attracted some of the best talent globally. Any bright young student around the world, you know, probably one of the first places they think of going to study or to work would be the U.S. It’s such a huge economy and creates so many opportunities for Africans to actually be able to partner with America and to be able to do business with American companies.
Host: Ben spent years working as an US diplomat all over the continent arranging business deals but also looking after security issues. That’s why we wanted to ask him: can mining really bring peace to Africa? Do you actually think that locating processing on the continent will actually help to stop some of this violent conflict? And if so, how?
Ben: Yeah, great point. um So very, you know, very simply, you know, no security, no investment, no economic development. And we’re not going to see, you know, any any improvement. So one of the, you know, one of the hopeful, you know, places on the continent right now is DRC, right?
There is a real opportunity for ah for peace in the East. There’s been yeah a huge amount of work that’s been done by the Congolese, by the Rwandans, by the US government to make that a priority.
But for a company like ReElement Africa, or other large companies to go into those zones of conflict, you have to have security there.
But we’re very hopeful and we have very good relationships with the Congolese and they have an extraordinary mineral endowment as you know in DRC. There’s no reason why DRC should not be one of the richest countries in the world and that be something that’s shared amongst the Congolese people. So I’m hopeful there.
Host: This conversation isn’t just about minerals — it’s about ownership, value, and Africa’s place in the global economy. And it asks a simple but powerful question: what happens when Africa stops exporting potential and starts building the future at home?
