Standard & Poor's says that increased demand for minerals, such as cobalt or graphite, to support diversification away from polluting fuels will benefit sub-Saharan African economies, including Mozambique's.

For Standard & Poor's (S&P) analysts, "several commodity-exporting economies in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly those in the southern and central regions of the continent, could benefit from a significant boost from increased demand for several minerals that are abundant in the region, such as cobalt, copper, graphite, lithium, magnesium, and rare earth metals."

In this sense, the economies of the region have an abundance of these materials essential to the energy transition, including graphite from Mozambique, Madagascar and Tanzania, cobalt from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and copper from DRCongo and Zambia, in addition to lithium, which is common in Zimbabwe and DRCongo.

S&P analysts write that with the impact of the green transition on the region's economies, several minerals will see increased demand and prices, given their importance in low-carbon energy production and the production of electric vehicles and batteries, examples being lithium, cobalt and graphite, which are key to the production of electric batteries, and nickel, which is widely used in low-carbon energy production, particularly wind power generation.

"An increase in demand for copper is also expected, given its importance in the construction of networks and power lines," point out the S&P analysts, cited by Lusa, noting that, according to the International Energy Agency, "the demand for these metals will increase dramatically in the coming decades, especially for cobalt, graphite, lithium, whose demand may increase more than 40 times compared to the current value.