This season of The Africa Hour explores minerals-based industrialisation and development in Africa, asking a simple but difficult question: how does Africa turn its mineral wealth into lasting economic value?
Each episode follows a specific mineral and a set of country case studies, tracing what happens from extraction through processing, production, and use. Through conversations with experts, producers, workers, and policymakers, the season looks at how industries actually function on the ground, where systems enable value creation, where they constrain it, and why progress has proven uneven.
Rather than treating industrialisation as an abstract policy goal, the series focuses on how Africa builds in practice: how things are made, what powers production, how labour and logistics shape outcomes, and how institutions and global forces influence what is possible. Along the way, it highlights both the structural challenges facing minerals-based development and the signs of momentum already taking shape across the continent.
This trailer offers a first look at the questions, stories, and voices that will shape the season.
