📅Date: Friday, 12 June 2026

⏰ Time: 9:45 a.m. - 11:00 a.m. EAT  (EAT)

Africa stands at a historic crossroads in the global green industrial transition. The continent possesses a substantial share of the world’s critical green minerals required for batteries, electric vehicles, renewable energy systems, digital technologies, and green manufacturing. Yet Africa continues to capture limited value from extraction, while youth unemployment remains among the continent’s most pressing socio-economic challenges.

The growing global demand for lithium, cobalt, graphite, manganese, rare earth elements, copper, nickel, and platinum group metals creates a strategic opportunity for Africa to move beyond raw commodity exports toward regional industrialisation, manufacturing, and green jobs creation. However, without deliberate implementation pathways, Africa risks reproducing historical extractive models with limited domestic value addition, weak technology transfer, and inadequate employment outcomes for young people. Building on the discussions and insights emerging from the Critical Minerals and Jobs in Africa webinar held on 14 January 2026, hosted by the @UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and the Africa Development Impact Forum (ADIF), the thematic solution session focuses on the practical “how” of translating Africa’s mineral wealth into scalable youth employment opportunities through green industrialisation. The session will move beyond diagnostics and instead identify implementation-ready pathways.

Implementation Roundtable and Commitment Lab

The session will utilize a moderated implementation roundtable format to enable deeper interaction among high-level stakeholders while maintaining focus on practical delivery pathways. The roundtable will be structured around targeted implementation questions addressing financing, industrial ecosystems, skills development, regional value chains, and youth job creation. The discussion will culminate in an Action Commitment Lab where participants identify concrete implementation actions, lead institutions, financing pathways, and short-term delivery milestones.