Q&A: What Africa wants from COP30 - special envoy Carlos Lopes

LAGOS - As the United Nations' COP30 summit begins in Belém, Brazil, African leaders and negotiators want the continent to capitalise on its vast mineral reserves to transform their economies.

Africa holds about 30% of the world's critical mineral reserves that include cobalt, lithium and manganese, the backbone of clean energy technologies, like solar panels and electric vehicles.

Yet it attracted only 2%, or $40 billion, of worldwide green investments last year, according to the African Development Bank, failing to take full advantage of its abundant resources.

Carlos Lopes, the COP30 presidency's special envoy for Africa will help shape this conversation at the summit.

The Bissau-Guinean economist and former senior U.N. official spoke to Context about what's at stake in Brazil.

What is Africa's core message for COP30?

Africa's message is simple but profound: We are not asking for sympathy, we are demanding coherence.

The continent that contributes less than 4% of global emissions carries the largest share of adaptation needs, yet also the greatest potential to redefine global growth.

Africa is no longer the 'terrain of aid' but the frontline of solutions - in renewable energy, carbon sequestration and demographic dynamism.

We are the lungs and the conscience of the planet, yet we are treated as an afterthought. COP30 must mark the moment when the world stops viewing Africa through a humanitarian lens and starts engaging it as a strategic partner in planetary repair.

What climate finance rules need to change for Africa to earn from its natural resources?

The current system rewards those who polluted yesterday and punishes those who could save tomorrow. Africa faces the world's highest cost of capital, even for the cleanest projects.

We need rules that recognise carbon sequestration as a service, not an externality, that count avoided emissions as much as reductions and that treat risk by evidence, not by postcode.

Climate finance must become development-compatible finance ... Otherwise, the 'green' in finance will remain the colour of paperwork, not of progress.

You have been championing Africa's 'green industrialisation.' What does this mean?

Green industrialisation is not about skipping industrialisation. It is about doing it differently and smarter. It means transforming Africa's natural resource endowment into the backbone of clean-tech supply chains, not merely exporting the ores that others refine.

For countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which holds over 70% of the world's cobalt reserves, the goal is not just to fuel foreign batteries, but to assemble them, brand them and benefit from them.

African countries with strategic materials for the energy transition should turn these resources into jobs. We need deliberate industrial policy, regional value chains and power generation that matches industrial demand.

The DRC's hydro potential alone could electrify much of the continent. We need to tap into it.

What do you hope resonates most with world leaders?

That Africa is not the caboose of the climate train. It is the locomotive of a new development model. The world must stop debating Africa's readiness.

From the Sahel's solar corridors to the Ethiopia Green Legacy, to banning combustion engine imports, to the Congo Basin's vast carbon sink, from Kenya's geothermal leadership to Morocco and Namibia's green hydrogen ambitions, the continent is already building the future.

COP30, being hosted in the Amazon, offers a fitting mirror to Africa's own green aspirations.

The Congo and Amazon basins - the twin lungs of the Earth - remind us that our destinies are interlinked.

The message from Africa to the world is clear: We are ready to breathe new life into global growth, if only the world would let us breathe.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

(Reporting by Bukola Adebayo; Editing by Ayla Jean Yackley. )