Mahama links Africa’s conflicts to struggle over natural resources

President John Mahama says the struggle for control of Africa’s natural resources and the profits from their extraction are central to the continent’s security crises, warning that powerful interests benefit from prolonged instability.

Addressing the 12th Tana High-Level Forum on Peace in Africa in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia, President Mahama said Africa, the President said the continent risks remaining vulnerable if its leaders fail to take greater control of their resources and determine their own security priorities.

He said “Let me be clear, Africa is not an empty chessboard for foreign powers to play their games. We are not spectators,” he said.

“But unless we consciously decide to take up the pen and write our own script, someone else will write it for us, and we will not like how the story ends.”

President Mahama said the importance of African minerals to the global green energy transition and digital economy should give the continent greater bargaining power, but communities endowed with these resources often bear the consequences of exploitation without enjoying the benefits.

He argued that sovereignty must go beyond political independence and membership of international institutions.

“Real sovereignty means having the administrative, legal, and economic power to govern your strategic assets, negotiate fair terms, and ensure the wealth beneath our people's feet actually puts food on their tables,” he said. He added that anything less amounted to “cosmetic independence that masks economic subjugation.”

He says African leaders must look beyond weapons proliferation and military operations to confront the political and economic interests that sustain conflicts across the continent.

“The real disease is mostly in the arena of political economy,” President Mahama said when presenting the 2026 State of Peace and Security in Africa Report at the 12th Tana High-Level Forum on Peace in Africa in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia.

He challenged leaders to examine who controls natural resources, who benefits financially from their extraction and whose political and financial interests are better served by continued instability than lasting peace.

“In every single theatre of conflict across this continent today, if you want to understand why guns are firing, do not start by counting the rifles,” he said.

“Ask three basic questions, who controls the resource? Who cashes the cheque from its extraction? And whose political and financial fortunes are better served by perpetual chaos than by stable peace?”

President Mahama cited Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Somalia and Mozambique as examples of how resource competition, governance failures and economic marginalisation contribute to insecurity.

In Sudan, he said, the battle lines were drawn as much around gold extraction sites as around Khartoum.

In eastern DRC, he linked the resurgence and entrenchment of the M23 group to coltan, cobalt and the global competition for minerals needed for the green energy transition.

He also attributed the continued presence of Al-Shabaab in Somalia partly to governance failures that have created openings for the group to exploit.

In Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado region, he said, the area’s substantial gas wealth has not translated into meaningful benefits for local young people, who instead viewed it as another source of marginalisation.

“These are not separate, random brushfires. They are symptoms of a single, continent-wide firestorm,” he said.