Corridor-Orchestrated Upgrading: Reconfiguring Rare Earth Value Chains in Africa

Corridor-Orchestrated Upgrading: Reconfiguring Rare Earth Value Chains in Africa Abstract Global value chain scholarship explains how governance structures shape value distribution and upgrading across transnational production networks. In strategically concentrated industries such as rare earth elements, however, upgrading constraints extend beyond firm capabilities to include geopolitical competition, infrastructural coordination, and the institutional organisation of production across multiple states. Despite rapidly growing demand driven by low-carbon technologies, advanced electronics, and defence applications, midstream processing capacity remains concentrated in a small number of technologically advanced economies. As a result, resource-rich regions often remain confined to upstream extraction within global mineral value chains. This article introduces Corridor-Orchestrated Upgrading (COU), a meso-scalar governance framework that conceptualises cross-border resource corridors as institutional configurations capable of recalibrating upgrading feasibility in concentrated industries. Through an abductive qualitative analysis of a sub-Saharan rare earth corridor linking Zambia, Malawi, and Namibia, the study evaluates whether corridor-level coordination alters midstream processing viability. The findings suggest that fragmented national strategies remain below the minimum scale required for economically viable separation facilities, while corridor-level aggregation shifts projected feedstock volumes toward operationally viable processing thresholds.