President Cyril Ramaphosa used his address at the India-South Africa Business Leaders' Roundtable on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit in New Delhi to push mineral beneficiation up the two countries' shared agenda, arguing that South Africa should process more of its critical minerals at home rather than exporting them raw for value-addition elsewhere.

The roundtable, held ahead of the 18th BRICS Leaders' Summit at Bharat Mandapam, fed into a bilateral meeting between Ramaphosa and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday, where the two leaders reviewed mining and critical minerals as part of a broader strategic partnership that also covers the proposed India-SACU trade agreement, infrastructure and skills development.

Ramaphosa named renewable energy, green hydrogen, critical minerals, infrastructure, agriculture and digital innovation as priority areas for deeper cooperation, pointing to the pairing of South Africa's mineral resources with India's manufacturing base as an opening for joint production of electric vehicles and batteries.

The push comes as India has separately been signing minerals cooperation deals across the continent, from graphite and rare earths in Mozambique to lithium, copper and cobalt blocks in Zimbabwe and Zambia, part of a wider strategy to secure supply chains outside China, which currently processes more than 90% of the world's rare earths.