ÂÜÀòÊÓƵ

Mining cannot scale without enabling infrastructure — water, road, rail, power, and ports. Governments and industries need to move faster, smarter, and together.

Minerals may not always command headlines like AI breakthroughs or inflation and commodity price volatility, but they remain the quiet engine behind nearly every facet of modern life. 

From the lithium-powered electric vehicles, rare-earths magnets, aircraft engines, and wind turbines, to the phosphate fertilizing the food that feeds billions, and the growing demands of data centers and defense sectors, minerals are the threads stitching together industries, supply chains, and livelihoods.

And yet, for a world so reliant on these resources, our ability to secure and transport them remains complex, high-risk, slow, and fractured.

The global mineral supply chain is straining under the weight of competing demands, persistent underinvestment, geopolitical volatility, and mounting sustainability expectations. 

At the same time, managing a growing and diverse set of stakeholders has become both critical and more complex while contending with a significant global talent gap, which is becoming one of the sector’s most pressing challenges, making it harder to meet growing technical and operational demands.

Add to that the unprecedented volatility in commodities and energy transition timelines, and you begin to understand the sheer scale of the task ahead.

Leading analysts and think tanks estimate that the world needs $5.3 trillion in investment by 2030 to meet mineral demand for decarbonization, digital infrastructure, and global development. That is three times the market capitalization of the top 20 mining companies in the sector. 

Yet capital alone cannot move minerals from resource-rich regions to end markets. For that, we need something far more elemental; we need infrastructure that transports minerals to markets and we need it done with a sense of urgency and collaboration.

ÂÜÀòÊÓƵ understands the stakes and the benefits of cross-border infrastructure for a new era of minerals and global development.

As an emerging hub for minerals and metals, the Kingdom has moved decisively — introducing a mining law that draws from the world’s leading mining countries; investing in world-class infrastructure; a rich geological database, developing human capital to work in these new industries; and creating the Future Minerals Forum as a strategic response to global sectoral challenges and opportunities. 

Today, FMF is more than a conference or exhibition; it has become a cause driven from ÂÜÀòÊÓƵ that unites the world in delivering the minerals essential for shaping a new era of global development and prosperity in supplier nations. 

We are achieving this through groundbreaking, strategic, and innovative initiatives that promote mineral resilience, responsible supply chains, and cross-border collaboration.

In addition, FMF has become the voice for the Super Region of Africa, West, and Central Asia.

These regions are critical in the global conversation of mineral security and electrification as they hold 79 percent of global cobalt reserves, 44 percent of global manganese, and 21 percent of global graphite, as well as sizeable resources of many other minerals, including copper and tin—the continent’s potential is unrivaled. 

The challenge is: how do we ensure that regions rich in mineral resources, especially Africa, not only serve as suppliers to the world, but also benefit from their endowment? 

It is about building the infrastructure that allows these minerals to power future industries. Extraction must go hand in hand with development, so the impact of minerals is not just measured in exports, but in the prosperity created for the people who live there.

Most recently, at the fourth edition of FMF in January, 89 government officials endorsed a clear and actionable agenda for the development of a global critical minerals’ framework, which includes the creation of cross-border mineral infrastructure corridors. 

FMF identified seven cross-border corridors; five in Africa and two in Latin America, focused on expanding access to critical resources, such as copper, graphite, rare earth elements, iron ore, and lithium. Each corridor has the potential to connect developing resource-rich nations to global markets. 

If implemented, these corridors will boost trade, expand access to transport, power, and water for industries and communities, and create thousands of jobs along the way. More importantly, they offer a real opportunity to embed resilience into the global mineral supply chain.

A case in point is the Lobito Corridor, a 1,300 km railway linking Angola’s Atlantic coast to the Democratic Republic of Congo. Its delivery has become a case study for international collaboration in a geopolitically challenging environment, showing what cross-border mineral infrastructure can achieve when backed by political will, regional and global cooperation, and strategic investment.

FMF, in partnership with multilateral organizations, is now applying elements of this approach and taking it further. The forum’s ministerial body is working with the World Bank to design new partnerships and funding models to help de-risk mining investments. Infrastructure financing remains the most difficult piece of the mining puzzle.

A deposit may be discovered, but the value remains untapped without power, water, roads, rail, and ports to move it. Worse still, underdeveloped corridors can choke trade and inflate costs, pushing critical minerals further out of reach for industries that need them most.

To that end, FMF is doing more than convening conversations; it is curating solutions. The shared concern amongst the 89 governments at the Ministerial Roundtable is aligning policy regimes across corridor countries, aligning investment priorities, and ensuring sustainability standards are not sacrificed for speed.

Simultaneously, the forum’s stakeholders are collaborating with regional governments and multilateral organizations on critical infrastructure enablers such as shared access.

For example, power requirements are being studied in Zambia to sustain its copper mining and that of Congo, while water access is being examined for mineral lithium production in South America’s lithium triangle. 

In a world where uncertainty is increasingly the norm, mineral supply chains require stability and predictability for investment and complex engineering that takes years to execute.

Cross-border collaboration is the only way to achieve this in most minerals. Governments and industry need to move faster, smarter, and together.

• Khalid Al-Mudaifer is ÂÜÀòÊÓƵ’s vice minister for mining affairs.