Ruto: Kenya will no longer export raw minerals

President William Ruto speaking during the Africa We Build Summit in Nairobi on April 23, 2026/PCS

President William Ruto has declared that Kenya will no longer export raw minerals, saying the government is shifting focus to local processing and value addition to ensure the country benefits fully from its natural resources.

Speaking during the Africa We Build Summit in Nairobi on Thursday, Ruto said Kenya had for years lost revenue by allowing companies to extract and export minerals in raw form without sufficient returns to the country.

He said the government had issued clear instructions that all minerals must be processed locally before export.

“Regarding minerals, we are not exporting anything raw going forward, the instructions are very clear,” Ruto said.

He cited the case of titanium mining in Kenya, saying one of the companies had exported large quantities of the mineral with little benefit to the country and surrounding communities.

“For the record, we had based titanium, one of the companies, they were exporting titanium out of Kenya. They exported everything close to the mines, and we got nothing out of it, very little,” he said.

“The future generations are going to ask us, there was titanium in Kenya, what happened to it? And we will have no answers for it.”

Ruto said the same policy would apply across the mineral sector, including rare earth minerals and gold, as the government seeks to build an industrial ecosystem around mineral processing.

“That is why, going forward, we have been very clear as a government that the rare earth that we are now looking at, all the other gold issues and the whole mineral sector, we are not going to export it raw anymore,” he said.

The President said Kenya and the wider East African region must move from being exporters of raw materials to producers of finished and refined products that create jobs and strengthen local industries.

He linked the policy shift to plans for regional refinery development, saying local refining would help Africa retain more value from its resources.

Ruto also welcomed plans by founder of the Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote to partner with Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania in building an oil refinery in Tanga, Tanzania.

The President said the proposed refinery would strengthen regional industrialisation and reduce dependence on imported petroleum products.

“We have the raw material, we have the market to buy the product, we have the capital to build it and we have the industrialists to help us run it. Why would we fail?” he said.

In a statement shared on his X account after the summit, Ruto said African industrialists and entrepreneurs were critical partners in driving economic growth, manufacturing and job creation.

He said Africa must increasingly rely on its own capital and institutions to finance infrastructure and industrial development instead of depending on external funding.

“We must harness the immense capital within Africa to drive infrastructure development our nations urgently require,” he said.

“To achieve this, we must mobilise financing internally and equally support African financial institutions.”

He added that continued reliance on foreign capital whose primary interest is profit would undermine Africa’s long-term prosperity and industrial ambitions.

The President said partnerships with African investors such as Dangote would help accelerate economic transformation across the continent and support regional self-reliance in strategic sectors such as mining, oil refining and manufacturing.