Reimagining Justice in Africa's Critical Mineral Governance: From Procedural Safeguards to Structural Transformation

Africa holds significant reserves of cobalt, lithium, manganese, platinum-group metals, and rare earth elements, minerals that decarbonization strategies and clean energy supply chains now depend on. Extraction is expanding. Justice is not. Extractive dependence, environmental degradation, and human rights violations persist beneath a growing body of governance measures focused on procedural protections while distributive inequalities and structural constraints go largely unaddressed. This perspective examines how justice is conceptualised and implemented within critical mineral governance in Africa, drawing on international, regional, and national frameworks alongside empirical evidence from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zambia, and Ghana. It shows that governance architectures consistently fail to convert formal safeguards into material justice outcomes, and proposes a justice-centred framework across five dimensions: procedural, recognition, restorative, distributive, and cosmopolitan justice. It introduces the Just Mineral Transition Index (JMTI), operationalising these dimensions through four governance pillars: transparency, inclusion, socio-environmental safeguards, and local value creation and structural transformation. The JMTI is a governance audit instrument, locating not just whether frameworks fall short, but where and why.