Do political cooperations and regulations manage Africa's sustainable mineral policy?

The purpose of this study is to identify the factors that determine the dependence on minerals for 10 mineral-rich African countries in terms of managing sustainable mineral policy and to ascertain whether regulations and international cooperations have a moderating effect on the effects of factors that increase dependence level of these countries. With recently developed panel data approaches, the impacts of economic growth, mineral rent, trade openness, regulatory measures, and international collaborations on mineral dependency are examined for the period of 2000–2020. The results show that trade openness, economic development, and increases in mineral rent all lead to greater mineral dependency. On the other side, the expansion of international collaborations results in less dependency. Further, mineral dependency level is not directly impacted by strict regulations. In terms of moderating influences, it has been shown that international collaborations and regulations both counteract the trade openness's tendency to increase dependency, demonstrating the efficacy of these factors. Based on the findings, policies are recommended that international cooperation and partnership opportunities with other nations, global institutions and development organizations should be pursued aggressively.