Sierra Leone critical minerals strategy sets the terms for processing at home

Freetown’s international conference centre hosted the launch of a National Strategy for Critical Minerals in May, covering 2026 to 2031 and opened by Vice President Mohamed Juldeh Jalloh alongside the eleventh council of ministers of the African Diamond Producers Association. Sierra Leone holds lithium, graphite, bauxite, cobalt, coltan, rutile, diamonds, iron ore and rare earth elements.

Mineral exports were worth $900 million in 2023, $1.13 billion in 2024 and $1.3 billion most recently, a rise of 16% year on year according to the Ministry of Mines and Mineral Resources. Julius Daniel Mattai, who has held the portfolio since 2023, told the Freetown gathering that the figure settles nothing on its own. “If we mine responsibly but export all the value, then we have lived well, but not wisely.”

“Sierra Leone is open for business, not capture,” he said during a session on strategic choices in critical minerals, welcoming investment while keeping sovereign control of what leaves the ground.

Mattai has urged African countries to negotiate collectively through the African Union, the African Continental Free Trade Area, the African Development Bank and the African Minerals Development Centre. A single producer facing a global buyer has little leverage. The approach traces to the African Mining Vision adopted in 2009, which has spent most of the years since as a document rather than a practice.

He put the same case in one line at the Africa Energy Forum in Cape Town in June, telling the critical minerals session that the age of digital minerals can become the age of African industrialisation.

Mattai chairs the diamond producers’ association through 2026 and the strategy runs to 2031. Processing capacity is what it will be measured on.