Mozambican President Daniel Chapo used the XII Tana Forum in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia, to call for a coordinated African response to intensifying international competition for the continent's critical minerals, natural gas, and oil. Speaking before heads of state and senior policymakers, Chapo framed the protection of strategic resources as inseparable from regional security, economic diversification, and the reform of multilateral institutions.
Chapo drew directly on Mozambique's experience in Cabo Delgado — where an insurgency has disrupted major LNG developments in the north of the country — as an illustration of the security risks that accompany the exploitation of high-value natural resources. He argued that without coordinated continental governance frameworks, African states remain exposed to external pressures that extract resource value while leaving limited economic benefit onshore.
The forum intervention comes at a moment of heightened strategic interest in African raw materials. The global energy transition is reshaping demand for minerals essential to battery and clean-energy supply chains, while natural gas continues to attract investment as a bridging fuel. Both dynamics are increasing the geopolitical weight of resource-rich African nations, yet Chapo noted that structural barriers to local beneficiation and value retention persist across the continent. His remarks pointed to a widening gap between the strategic value attributed to African resources by external actors and the economic returns captured by host governments and local industries.
Chapo specifically linked resource governance to security architecture, arguing that instability in resource-producing regions — as demonstrated in Cabo Delgado — cannot be separated from the terms under which extraction is negotiated and managed. He called for African institutions to play a stronger role in setting those terms, and for multilateral bodies to be reformed to give the continent greater influence over the rules governing resource trade and investment.
The Tana Forum, an annual high-level African security dialogue, provided a platform for Chapo to position Mozambique's LNG-linked security crisis as a continental-scale policy question rather than a national emergency. By connecting the Cabo Delgado experience to the broader reorganisation of global industrial supply chains, the president sought to build political consensus around the principle that resource sovereignty and physical security are mutually reinforcing priorities. No specific policy instruments, treaties, or institutional proposals were announced at the forum.