The startups helping African countries capture the value of their mineral exports

Sabi says its platform is now active in Nigeria, DR Congo, Tanzania, and Zambia, processing more than 20,000 tons of minerals monthly, and is targeting a run rate that could account for 5% of US imports in select mineral categories by the end of 2025. “TRACE is free to use for the producers we onboard,” Adesina told Semafor. “We monetize trade flow, not platform access.

While Sabi is digitizing the chain of custody, Kemcore is focused on the mining reagents that fuel the supply chain. Originally launched in Hong Kong, the company moved operations to southern Africa and is now commissioning a 55,000-ton-per-year sodium metabisulfite (SMBS) plant in Botswana that cost around $15 million to build, after raising over $60 million in debt from regional banks. SMBS is used to separate metals from ore during processing, and delays in sourcing it from China were holding up production across the Copperbelt in Zambia and DR Congo.

“Shipping from Asia meant 10 to 12 weeks of exposure to stock-outs,” said Radithipa, Kemcore’s chief commercial officer. “Our Botswana plant alone will cut that to 7 to 10 days.” The company has signed MOUs for more “over-the-fence” reagent plants, modular units built adjacent to mining clients and operated under long-term contracts.

Matta, led by CEO Mudiaga Mowoe, is tackling a more fragmented but equally important challenge: industrial procurement by creating what it calls a “multi-layered operating system” for verified B2B trade. Through its logistics subsidiary, Flux by Matta, the company supports real-time movement of materials across Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, and Senegal.

“Our aim is to make African materials procurement-ready and globally competitive,” Mowoe said. “That means building trust, not just in the products, but in the process.”

What makes these companies interesting isn’t just that they’re African, but that they’re working on the internal pipes of African trade. Sabi’s pivot is one of the most radical we’ve seen. They’ve gone from helping distributors track inventory in informal markets to verifying tungsten exports for international buyers. But they’ve kept their core principle: stay asset-light, build infrastructure others can use.

Kemcore, in contrast, is deeply physical. The company solves pain points like long lead times, and lack of local supply. As more minerals get refined closer to home, their reagents will become indispensable.

Matta, which raised around $5 million in venture funding last year, is building a trust layer that lets global manufacturers treat African suppliers as equals, not just alternatives. And that’s what all three of these companies are chasing: trust, at scale.

Behind all of this is a market reshaped by geopolitics and climate policy. The US Inflation Reduction Act and EU regulations now require supply chain traceability. EV battery makers, for example, want ESG-compliant minerals. Africa has the inputs, but to fully capitalize, it needs the infrastructure to prove it.

W Gyude Moore, a senior fellow at Washington’s Center for Global Development, believes that these startups are getting funded because investors can see a clear path to revenue. Yet he’s skeptical about the value proposition for African governments.

“There used to be a time when environmentalism was being pushed by both Europe and the Biden administration, but under the Trump administration, environmentalism is not perceived as important enough to order or change people’s behavior,” he told Semafor.