Petroleum. Gold. Cobalt. Cocoa. Coffee. Copper. Diamonds. Cashew. The continent holds a disproportionate share of every resource the global economy is currently scrambling for: energy transition minerals, food commodities, industrial inputs. The inventory is staggering. The returns are not. Africa's total merchandise exports were $585.8 billion in 2024, against global merchandise trade of $23.88 trillion. Africa's share: 2.5 percent.
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Sub-Saharan Africa exports raw materials at 48.26 percent of its total export mix, yet raw material imports are just 8.15 percent of what it buys in. Consumer goods are 14.14 percent of exports and 42.95 percent of imports. Africa exports inputs and imports outputs. Sells cheap, buys expensive. Every year, across every commodity cycle. This is not a policy failure. It is a design feature.
Africa contributes just 19 to 20 percent of global cocoa export value, because the beans leave unprocessed. The Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland grind, brand and sell finished chocolate at ten to thirty times the input cost. Lindt does not grow a single cocoa tree. Nigeria's non-oil exports hit $5.456 billion in 2024, up 20.79 percent. But look at the composition: sesame seeds, cashew nuts, crude shea nuts. The same commodities Nigeria exported in the 1960s. Volume growth without structural transformation is just faster extraction.
The DRC holds the world's largest cobalt reserves, inside every EV battery on earth, and earns around $28.5 billion a year from it, almost entirely as raw ore. Only 2 percent of Africa's energy transition mineral exports go to other African countries. The remaining 98 percent feeds manufacturing in China, Europe and North America, which return finished goods to Africa at full margin. The continent is financing the energy transition. It is not participating in it.
What trade finance must answer for
Pre-export finance funding raw commodities regardless of value addition is technically sound, but every such facility is a vote for the status quo. Export credit facilities, risk participation agreements and DFI co-financing frameworks have the architecture to favour processors and value-added exporters. The question is not capability. It is intent. Intra-African trade reached $208 billion in 2024, up 7.7 percent. But without value-addition conditions inside export finance structures, Africa will keep shipping wealth out unfinished and importing it back transformed.
Wealth without control is not wealth. It is someone else's supply chain.