Who Really Owns Africa’s Natural Resources?
Africa is one of the world’s richest continents in oil, gas, gold, copper, cobalt, lithium, platinum and other strategic resources. Yet the question of who actually owns this wealth is more complicated than it appears. In most cases, African governments legally control resources on behalf of their citizens, while private companies—many of them foreign-owned—receive licenses to explore, mine, process and sell them. The real battle is therefore not only about ownership, but also about who controls extraction, who receives the profits and who captures the value after the resources leave the ground.
Aug 21, 2026
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