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LAGOS — Nigeria’s ambition to build a value-added supply chain for critical minerals including lithium is getting a significant boost from an unlikely source: an e-marketplace startup.
Sabi, a business-to-business e-commerce company focused on the informal economy, has been quietly building expertise as a middle man for miners seeking to export. In recent weeks, it inked separate deals with two companies — Italy’s Snowball Holdings, and Transition Resources from the US. They plan to set up lithium processing plants in the country over the coming year.
The three-year old Lagos-based startup will ensure both international companies have regular supply from discrete small-scale lithium miners across Nigeria, CEO Anu Adasolum told Semafor Africa. It will also manage the companies’ access to services like quality control and logistics needed to export the refined mineral abroad.
The expected daily processing capacity for each plant will be 500 tons per day “with scalable capacity of up to 1,000 tons per day,” Adasolum said. The US will be the primary export destination for now but Italy and Germany could be accessible in the future, she said.
Sabi is also exploring avenues to advance mineral processing in Zambia for copper and Tanzania for nickel. These moves reflect a broader regional wave to supply in-demand commodities to the world, especially in relation to the energy transition.
| Companies face a “comprehensive framework” of permits to set up lithium processing in Nigeria. → |
