Across Africa, the debate around mining is moving beyond the question of how to attract investment. Governments are increasingly looking to turn mineral wealth into jobs, industrial capacity, and greater value at home, while communities are demanding a meaningful stake in the projects taking place around them. The focus is shifting towards where the value goes when ore leaves the ground.
That shift has particular significance as demand for critical minerals grows. Africa holds many of the resources needed for the global energy and industrial transition, but extracting them will only deliver lasting economic benefits if more of the value created remains in the countries where those resources are found.
Kenya is now considering how to put that approach into practice at Mrima Hill. The mineral deposit in Kwale County contains indicated resources of 5.8 million t of niobium ore and 48.7 million t of rare earth ore, according to the Ministry of Mining. Niobium and rare earth elements are strategically important to a range of advanced industrial and technology supply chains, making Mrima Hill a potentially significant resource for Kenya as it seeks to expand its role in the critical minerals economy.
The scale of the opportunity comes alongside significant local responsibilities. The project sits within the wider Mrima Hill forest ecosystem and near areas of deep cultural importance to local communities. Its development will therefore need to address water use, processing residues, land, livelihoods, and cultural heritage, while ensuring that the economic benefits of the resource extend beyond the mine itself.
These are legitimate concerns for communities around Mrima Hill, and they should shape the project itself rather than being treated as obstacles to development.
There are lessons elsewhere. Lynas Rare Earth’s operations in Malaysia have faced sustained scrutiny around processing and waste management, while Mt Weld in Australia provides another example of the complexities involved in developing rare earth resources and processing them into usable products. These experiences offer useful lessons on scrutiny and environmental management, while Mrima Hill will ultimately require its own assessment based on its geology, environment, and communities.
The important point is that the technology available to developers has changed.
Newer refining approaches using water-based chemistry can provide alternatives to more conventional solvent-based processing. Advances in processing technology can reduce the land, water, chemical, and waste requirements associated with rare earth refining, while also allowing more of the processing activity to take place closer to where resources are extracted.
That does not mean technology alone makes a project responsible. Any proposed process still needs to be independently assessed against the particular conditions at Mrima Hill. It does, however, mean that the environmental footprint of a modern rare earth project does not necessarily have to resemble that of projects developed a generation ago.
For communities around Mrima Hill, the choice of processing technology will therefore be an important part of the project’s design. Different approaches can have very different requirements for water, land, chemicals, energy, and waste, as well as the scale of the processing facilities themselves. Those choices can also shape the skills, employment, and wider economic activity created locally.
This is where the environmental and economic arguments come together. Kenya is increasingly demanding that its natural resources generate value beyond extraction. President William Ruto’s recent confrontation with Tata Chemicals over its soda ash operation was explicitly framed around local processing, industrialisation, and jobs. The government’s position was that Kenya’s resources should feed domestic industries and create economic opportunities rather than simply leave the country as raw material.
Mrima Hill should be approached with the same ambition.
For Kwale, a successful project could create a new generation of mining and processing employment, particularly if the resource is refined further in Kenya rather than exported as an intermediate product for final processing elsewhere. The distinction matters: beneficiation into a concentrate captures some value locally, while refining through to a finished rare earth oxide would retain a much greater share of the value chain in Kenya. Kenya’s mining framework also provides for mineral royalties to be shared between the national government, county government, and local community, alongside commitments around local employment, training, and development.
The opportunity, then, is to make economic development and community protection reinforce one another. A project that uses less land and water, manages residues effectively, creates skilled employment, and retains more value locally is better positioned to deliver meaningful benefits around the mine as well as from it. Naturally this is why the choice of developer is so key.
For Africa, the implications extend far beyond Kenya. The continent holds many of the minerals the global economy increasingly needs, but its opportunity lies in developing those resources in ways that build local industrial capacity and give communities a meaningful stake in the resulting growth.
Therefore, the developer ultimately chosen for Mrima Hill should be judged by more than what it can extract. It should be judged by the technology it brings, the value it creates locally, the way it engages communities and the environmental footprint it leaves behind.
Africa’s next generation of mineral projects will be defined by those choices. Mrima Hill is an opportunity for Kenya to show that responsible development and economic development can move in the same direction.
