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Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed opened Ethiopia's national precious metals refinery in the Bole Lemi industrial zone of Addis Ababa on 10 October. The plant, 51% owned by state-owned Ethiopian Investment Holdings and 49% by Sam Precious Metals, can refine more than 600 tonnes of precious metals a year at full capacity, the government said. Gold earned Ethiopia about $5.5 billion in the 2025/26 fiscal year, about half of its export revenue, and has so far been refined in Dubai. Refining at home could capture more value and foreign currency, and Abiy wants the plant to serve miners from neighbouring countries as a regional hub.
Nigeria's Ondo State signed a public-private partnership with PyVee Limited to build what it calls the country's first titanium processing plant, at a total cost of $362 million, the state government said on 10 October. A $12 million pilot plant is due to start within 21 months, followed by a complex costing more than $350 million on a 100-hectare site at Alape in Ilaje, with the state's land as its equity. The plant would turn local ilmenite into titanium dioxide pigment and titanium sponge. Financing has not been disclosed, but the project would be an early test of Nigeria's push to process its minerals at home.
Power shortages are holding back industry in Central Africa. In Cameroon, delays to a second transmission line from the 420-megawatt Nachtigal dam leave 150 megawatts of industrial demand waiting for supply, Investir au Cameroun reported on 9 October. In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo), Teddy Lwamba, head of the state utility SNEL, told Kinshasa's provincial deputies on 10 October that rolling cuts stem from output below demand, broken machines, slow purchases of spare parts, vandalism and fraud. Factories left without grid power must rely on costly diesel while oil prices are high, and new transmission projects will take years to close the gap.
