Sustainable exploitation of rare earth minerals in Southern Africa: Exploring the linkages

This paper addresses sustainability issues in the minerals sector through a focus on the rare earth minerals value chain in Southern Africa. The approach employed in the analysis provides for the incorporation of aspects of comparative advantage in the attainment of the sustainable development goals, as rare earth mineral endowments located in specific jurisdictions can contribute to the accomplishment of these development milestones. The analysis employed seven datasets on rare earth mineral occurrences, development corridors in Southern Africa, Mineral Industries and Related Infrastructure, the quality infrastructure for sustainable development index, Solar PV and wind energy capacity and data on the Mo Ibrahim index of Africa governance. The rare earth minerals pathway to sustainability argued in this paper is through at least four distinct nodes along the value chain. The first node is on rare earth minerals exploration and maps prospectivity of these minerals and the associated socio-economic development issues. It establishes the role of development corridors in facilitating exploration through the integration of nodes of deposit-rich areas and providing a pathway in the transportation of inputs and outputs across the region. The second node assesses the region’s energy capacity against the energy requirements for the sustainable extraction of rare earth minerals. This node also assesses the location of the mines and the extraction technologies employed to ensure a reduction in the carbon emission footprint on the natural habitats through addressing the challenges of abandoned mines. The third node focuses on analysis of the location of rare earth mineral processing centers and their relationship with transport and development corridors. This fosters the spread of benefits beyond the local mining areas to other regions and ensures that these corridors act pull factors for the location of mineral processing centers. The fourth node is crosscutting and establishes the security and geopolitical landscape of rare earth minerals. The paper concludes that sustainability should be measured by both the attainment specific goals and the direct and indirect impacts along the pathway towards the attainment of the goals along each distinct commodity value chain. This ensures that the path to sustainable development in the minerals sector has a lower carbon footprint, fosters inclusive and sustained growth that reorients Southern Africa’s position in the rare earth minerals regional and global value chains and addresses socioeconomic challenges through enhanced value addition, growing processing capacity and an integrated transport network through leveraging development corridors.