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Critical raw materials (CRMs) are the backbone of today’s fast-growing industries, from renewable energy technologies and batteries to advanced semiconductors. Rising demand for these resources is driving growing competition for access to them and control over their value chains. Against this backdrop, creating mutually beneficial international partnerships among the actors involved could help strengthen energy and economic security, while influencing the trajectory of international cooperation in the energy transition era.
African countries are emerging as pivotal actors in global CRM markets. Many governments are seeking to move beyond the role of raw material suppliers and play a more active part in shaping green industrial value chains that generate economic, industrial and social benefits. In the European Union, demand for critical raw materials is rapidly increasing, both to support the development of technologies enabling the energy transition and to meet the bloc’s broader industrial objectives. Cooperation with African countries is thus a strategic priority. The challenge for the EU and its Member States is to develop partnerships that align their economic and strategic interests with Africa’s development and green industrialisation objectives. This is a challenge that Italy, too, can help overcome through its Mattei Plan.
This will be the focus of the event ‘New Resources for a New Cooperation: Critical Raw Materials in the Euro-African Partnership’, which will bring together European, Italian and African policymakers, experts, representatives of international organisations, and private-sector stakeholders to discuss how to facilitate and support the Euro-African partnership and shape international cooperation within the energy transition.
The event is organised as part of the project ‘The Geopolitics of Critical Raw Materials: Towards Just and Sustainable Partnerships between Europe, Italy and African Countries’, carried out by ECCO in partnership with the South African think tank Southern Transitions and supported by Fondazione CSF and Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo.
Follow this link to see the Program
