SEMAFOR
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, the Lagos-headquartered 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 — that plan to set up lithium processing plants in the country over the coming year.
Sabi will ensure both companies have regular supply from discrete small-scale lithium miners across Nigeria, chief executive officer 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.
