Lesala Maphathe Urges Africa to Process More Resources at Home

What changed

Lesala Maphathe, chairperson of Lesotho’s Revolution for Prosperity Youth League, has urged African countries to process more of their minerals and agricultural goods at home instead of exporting raw materials and importing finished products. Speaking during the Second African Political Party Summit in Addis Ababa on November 5–7, 2026, he proposed a hypothetical split in which Lesotho retained 80% of its diamonds for local cutting and processing and exported 20%.

Why it matters

Maphathe’s argument is simple: a diamond, a fleece or a sack of maize creates more opportunity when local businesses can work on it before it leaves the country.

For Lesotho, he pointed to diamonds, food, wool and mohair as possible foundations for domestic industries. He also cited maize as a product the country could develop and sell beyond its borders. The goal would be to create jobs while reducing reliance on finished food imports from South Africa.

That link to migration gives the proposal its sharpest edge. Maphathe connected weak local industrial capacity with youth unemployment and the pressure on young people in Lesotho to seek work in South Africa. Processing resources at home would not automatically solve that problem, but it would move the debate from how much wealth a country possesses to how much work and enterprise it can build around that wealth.

He also highlighted Ethiopia’s large population as both a workforce and a domestic market, while praising its efforts to produce goods locally. That points to the practical test for ideas like his: turning political ambition into factories, skills, buyers and reliable production. No funding, timetable or government commitment was announced, and the 80% diamond-retention figure was an illustration rather than a policy.