The remarks come as Africa rapidly emerges as one of the world’s fastest-growing lithium-producing regions. According to the African Energy Chamber, the continent holds an estimated 26.7 million tonnes of identified lithium resources, representing about 5% to 6% of global reserves. 

Africa’s share of global lithium production is projected to rise from about 4% in 2023 to nearly 15% by 2028 as new mines come online across Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Mali, Nigeria, Namibia and Ghana.

Yet, most African countries continue to export lithium in raw or minimally processed form, allowing overseas manufacturers to capture the highest-value stages of the battery supply chain. That is the model Afreximbank says it no longer wants to support.

“If somebody is coming just for the mining and then takes lithium in its raw state abroad, please don’t bring him to Afreximbank,” Elombi said. “We are no longer interested in anyone who is going to just mine and take it abroad. We want people who mine and process at home.”

That logic underpins the bank’s investment in Spiro in 2025. Afreximbank and its subsidiaries have committed a combined $125 million to the electric mobility company through two separate facilities.

In October 2025, the Fund for Export Development in Africa (FEDA), Afreximbank’s impact investment arm, invested $75 million in equity as the anchor investor in Spiro’s $100 million funding round, making the bank one of the company’s largest strategic shareholders. 

Afreximbank also extended a separate $50 million debt facility to Spiro, first agreed in 2024 and finalised in early 2026 alongside co-investors including Nithio and the Africa Go Green Fund, according to the announcement. The financing will support the expansion of Spiro’s fleet of electric motorcycles and the rollout of thousands of battery-swapping stations across Benin, Togo, Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya and Nigeria.

For Elombi, the investment goes beyond electric mobility. He said companies like Spiro are creating the demand needed to build a domestic battery industry, laying the groundwork for Africa to design, assemble and eventually manufacture batteries locally instead of remaining an exporter of raw minerals.

The strategy aligns with a broader shift taking place across Africa’s mining industry. Governments are increasingly introducing policies aimed at encouraging local processing before export.

Zimbabwe, Namibia, and Ghana have all introduced restrictions on raw lithium exports, while Nigeria has increasingly required investors to build processing facilities alongside mining operations. Nigeria has already attracted more than $1.3 billion in lithium processing commitments from Chinese firms including Ganfeng Lithium, Canmax Technologies and Jiuling Lithium, according to Nigeria’s minister of solid minerals development, Dele Alake. The country’s lithium deposits, spread across Nasarawa, Kaduna, Kogi and Kwara states, are estimated by the government to be worth more than $34 billion.

Elsewhere on the continent, investment is beginning to flow into battery manufacturing itself. Morocco is building Africa’s largest lithium-ion battery gigafactory through a $1.3 billion investment by China’s Gotion High-Tech, with plans to eventually expand the facility into a $6.4 billion plant capable of producing 100 GWh annually for European automakers.

In Central Africa, Zambia and the DRC are jointly developing a $2.7 billion battery special economic zone designed to manufacture battery precursor materials rather than export lithium, cobalt and copper in raw form. 

BloombergNEF, the clean energy and strategic research arm of Bloomberg L.P, estimates that producing battery precursor materials in the DRC could cost roughly one-third of equivalent facilities in the United States while generating significantly lower emissions than comparable production in China.

Despite the growing momentum, significant challenges remain. While Africa has abundant lithium reserves, it has very few operational refineries capable of producing battery-grade lithium hydroxide or lithium carbonate, the critical materials needed for battery manufacturing.

Technical expertise is another major constraint.

“We have the resources. We have the money,” Elombi said. “What we don’t have is the expertise.”

Reflecting on his visit to China, he said seeing battery manufacturing firsthand changed his understanding of the industry. Rather than a single battery unit, modern EV batteries are made up of hundreds of small cells assembled into highly engineered systems using multiple processed minerals. 

That complexity, he said, reinforced the importance of developing manufacturing capabilities rather than simply exporting raw lithium.

For Afreximbank, that means future investments will increasingly target companies capable of processing minerals, manufacturing battery components, and building industrial ecosystems around Africa’s natural resources.

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