‎WiM-Africa boss to lead conversation on global metals pricing at Shanghai Metals Expo 2026‎

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‎As a means of driving African perspective on the global solid minerals valuation and pricing, the Executive Director of Women in Mining Africa (WiM-Africa), Dr. Comfort Asokoro-Ogaji, is going to lead a roundtable conversation as a speaker at the Shanghai Metals Expo 2026 in China in November.
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‎Her speech will focus on how to address the need for Africa to “move beyond celebrating the size of its mineral endowment and begin building the collective market intelligence, processing capacity and commercial infrastructure required to participate meaningfully in how its minerals and metals are valued.”
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‎The roundtable, organised by Shanghai Metals Market (SMM), will examine “Eastern Pricing 2.0: Integrating Futures, Physical Markets, Industry and Finance for the Next Stage of Global Metals Pricing.”
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‎In a release on Wednesday, the executive director said, “For Africa, the conversation raises a fundamental strategic question: How does a continent with significant mineral resources strengthen its influence at the tables where the value of those resources is determined?”
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‎The emergence of new centres of metals trading, processing, manufacturing and price discovery, she said, has provided “an important moment for African governments, industry, producers and institutions to reconsider the continent’s position within global mineral markets.
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‎According to her, “Africa cannot build pricing power simply by having minerals beneath its soil.
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‎”We must put our African mineral ecosystem together — our producers, geological and market data, processing capacity, standards, laboratories, commodity exchanges, financial institutions and regional value chains — if we want to become more relevant in the markets where value is determined.”
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‎The discussion is particularly significant as the global competition intensifies around copper, lithium, cobalt, nickel, rare earths and other minerals required for industrialisation and the energy transition.
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‎”As global mineral markets evolve, WiM-Africa will continue to advocate for an Africa that participates, not only at the point of extraction, but increasingly across the entire chain of data, processing, markets, finance and value creation,” Asokoro-Ogaji said.
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