Maputo, July 29, 2025 (Lusa) - Energy expert António Niquice said in Maputo on Tuesday that the current model of resource extraction in Africa is “archaic” and constitutes “environmental and resource slavery,” arguing that industrialising the continent is an urgent priority.
“We must export processed minerals. The big opportunity we have is in positioning Africa as a continent that adds value to materials in the 21st century, just as it was before,” said António Niquice, adding that the refineries needed in Africa would add value and generate employment.
Speaking in Maputo during the regional interparliamentary conference on climate change, energy transition and the oil and gas sector in the southern region, the former deputy of the ruling Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo) party argued that Africa needs to comply with the assumptions of the energy transition in the medium and long term, while fully supporting local development.
The current extractive model “is the only archaic model that still embodies environmental and resource slavery,” said Niquice, who recently published a book on the extractive industry in Mozambique.
In the same statements, Niquice pointed out that “African countries have yet to adopt a serious plan to start the industrialisation process. The continent, despite having so much gold, so many rubies, so many diamonds,” still relies on external “refineries that process this resource internally.”
“Why do we have to hold auctions in Europe? We see the movement of Africans that this process pulls along, a movement we facilitate within the development of the hotel industry, and the supermarkets that we go to build with our own money, which is effectively the result of this Eurocentric development model. We need to reverse this paradigm,” he said.
Recognising the need to diversify the economy with investments in agriculture, the former MP defended the processing of minerals on the continent.
“We need to have factories in our own countries to produce fertilisers,” he said, highlighting the opportunity for Mozambique, rich in fossil fuels, the main raw material for fertilisers, to develop such an industry.
Niquice said that the discussion about not exploiting these resources “because of the energy transition issue” is “out of the question.”
“Africa’s carbon emissions as a continent are still around 4 per cent” of the global total. At the same time “the largest economies continue to pollute and are not even signatories to protocols such as Kyoto,” he argued.
For the expert, “the debate pyramid is inverted,” and current assumptions aim to “guide the present development toward greater challenges” in countries such as Mozambique, since, he recalled, developed industries and economies “have effectively gone through these processes” of resource exploitation.
The regional interparliamentary conference on climate change brings together MPs from five southern African countries with strong potential in the oil and gas sector, representatives of governments, civil society organisations and international partners.
Mozambique has three approved development projects for the exploration of natural gas reserves in the Rovuma basin, classified among the largest in the world, off the coast of Cabo Delgado.
In addition to these, other major coal exploration projects are underway in the central province of Tete and natural gas extraction projects in the province of Inhambane.
RYR/ADB // ADB.
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