<![CDATA[Purpose: This article examines whether resource governance in African critical-mineral economies can translate mineral abundance into value-chain upgrading and strategic autonomy rather than a purely extractive relationship with global supply chains.Methodology: The study adopts a qualitative documentary and comparative case design, drawing on peer reviewed literature, African Union policy instruments, and international organization reports published mainly between 2021 and 2026, with comparative attention to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, supported by evidence from Tanzania, South Africa, and West African producers.Results: Africa supplies substantial shares of global cobalt, copper, and manganese but captures a small fraction of downstream value; resource governance produces meaningful upgrading only where regulatory authority combines with infrastructure, finance, technological capability, local enterprise participation, and regional integration, while resource nationalism alone shows limited effect absent institutional capacity.Conclusions: Strategic autonomy should be understood as productive capability rather than resource ownership, requiring African states to align mineral governance with industrial policy and regional cooperation frameworks such as the African Continental Free Trade Area.Limitations: The documentary design relies on secondary and institutional sources rather than primary fieldwork or firm-level data, constraining claims about enterprise-level implementation.Contributions: The article offers a governance-capability framework that helps policymakers distinguish mineral policies that merely raise state revenue from those that build lasting industrial capacity.]]>
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