The surge in critical minerals demand has revived debates on extraction, development, and governance in resource-rich low- and middle-income countries. While many issues echo longstanding concerns, shifting geopolitics and technological change prompt questions over whether to revisit classical approaches, such as structuralism and dependency, or develop new frameworks to address emerging conditions.
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The rapid rise in demand for critical minerals, driven by energy transitions, digitalisation, and growing security concerns, has placed extractive sectors back at the centre of global development debates. With a large share of mineral production located in low- and middle-income countries, questions around extraction, value creation, innovation, political and social inclusion, environmental impacts, and governance more broadly have become central to both producing and consuming economies.
Yet many of the issues now being debated are far from new. Development scholars have long grappled with questions of value addition and industrialisation, structural change, the “resource curse,” environmental and social impacts, and the political economy of extractive sectors. This raises a central question: are we facing fundamentally new challenges, or revisiting longstanding concerns under new labels?
This seminar brings together researchers from Africa and Latin America to reflect on this question, drawing on long-standing work on innovation, industrialisation, and inclusive development. We argue that while many core tensions remain, new conditions, such as shifting geopolitical dynamics, technological change, and emerging capabilities in producer countries, open up different possibilities. However, without innovation in governance and more inclusive development pathways, the current wave of extraction risks deepening inequalities, intensifying conflict, and undermining democratic processes.
Speakers
- Anabel Marín, IDS Research Fellow, Institute of Development Studies;
- Erika Kraemer-Mbula, University of Johannesburg;
- Ann Kingiri, African Centre for Technology Studies, Kenya.
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