Critical and strategic minerals are becoming one of the most consequential policy domains of the twenty-first century. They sit at the core of the energy transition and the digital economy: electric mobility, renewable power generation, grid storage, semiconductor manufacturing, advanced telecommunications, artificial intelligence hardware, aerospace systems, and multiple defense applications. Yet, despite the scale and pace of the global transition, the world has not “solved” the challenge of critical minerals. The core constraint is not simply where ore bodies or brines exist, but whether societies can reliably, sustainably, and at scale extract, separate, refine, qualify, reuse, and recycle the necessary materials.

The scientific literature over the last decade mirrors this reality. Research on critical minerals and rare earth elements expanded sharply following the 2010 rare earth supply crisis. The field evolved from a narrow preoccupation with supply disruptions and trade concentration to a broader, more complex agenda in which sustainability, supply chain security, governance, circular-economy strategies, processing technologies, and environmental impacts are deeply intertwined. At the same time, the literature identifies major, persistent knowledge gaps that remain unresolved precisely where the stakes are highest: terrestrial ecosystem impacts; social, governance, and justice dimensions; circularity beyond end-of-life recycling (including component reuse and remanufacturing); element co-dependencies and linkage effects; standardized protocols for toxicology and impact measurement; and the underrepresentation of resource-rich developing regions both as producers of knowledge and as beneficiaries of research agendas.

Latin America occupies a paradoxical position in this global landscape. The region is among the world’s most important sources of several critical minerals — particularly copper and lithium, and  perhaps others, since so much of the continent remains unexplored. Yet Latin America captures only a modest share of the value, learning, and strategic leverage embedded in these supply chains. The prevailing development model remains heavily upstream: extraction and export with limited midstream processing, limited materials qualification capability, limited circular economy infrastructure, and insufficient investment in the applied science and engineering platforms that determine competitiveness. The result is a “resource endowment trap”: high exposure to commodity cycles, persistent external technological dependence, and recurring social and environmental conflicts that erode legitimacy and slow investment.

This strategic program argues that the correct response for Latin America is not to double down on extraction alone, nor to attempt an unrealistic leap to full domestic vertical integration in every mineral and technology. The correct response is to build regional, shared, knowledge-intensive platforms that allow countries to upgrade in the stages where value and strategic relevance concentrate: processing and separation; materials characterization and qualification; standards and metrology; circular economy pathways beyond recycling; and the “bridging infrastructure” of pilot and demonstration facilities that convert laboratory insights into deployable industrial processes. The literature strongly supports this direction: The bottlenecks are midstream and system-level, and the research frontier is still evolving, leaving room for well-designed latecomer strategies to shape global pathways rather than merely adopt them.

The INKA Strategic Program on Critical Minerals and Advanced Materials proposes a coherent, regional solution: a networked architecture that brings together governments, universities, research institutes, industry, startups, and both public and private international partners to develop applied research consortia; establish shared pilot and demonstration infrastructure; create standards and metrology capacity that enables traceability and market access; build human capital at scale; and deploy catalytic innovation finance that bridges the “valley of death” from research to deployment.

The program is explicitly designed to close the gaps identified by the scientific literature and to position Latin America as a contributor to global knowledge, not only a supplier of raw materials. It is also designed to create tangible economic outcomes: higher domestic value added, new industrial capabilities, job creation in knowledge-intensive segments, and greater resilience to commodity cycles. Finally, it is designed to improve environmental and social performance by investing in the measurement systems, protocols, governance tools, and community co-production mechanisms that are currently underdeveloped in global research and practice.

The program is organized into five mutually reinforcing pillars:

• Applied Research and Development Consortia (TRL 3-6): Cross-disciplinary, demand-driven research clusters targeting key bottlenecks in processing, separation, recycling, and materials performance; explicitly structured to overcome thematic fragmentation highlighted in the literature.
• Shared Pilot and Demonstration Infrastructure (TRL 6-8): Regional pilot facilities and modular demonstration lines for processing, separation, recycling, and qualification; addressing the widely documented scale-up gap and the lack of integrated and scalable recycling frameworks.
• Standards, Metrology, Traceability, and Environmental Protocols (“Trusted Supply Platform”): A regional capability to measure, certify, and verify product quality and sustainability, addressing the absence of standardized toxicology and monitoring protocols and the strategic importance of standards.
• Human Capital, Talent Mobility, and Knowledge Co-Production: Training pipelines for researchers, engineers, technicians, and regulators; regional mobility and diaspora engagement; deliberate co-production approaches to close Global North/Global South knowledge divides in impacts and governance.
• Innovation Finance and Industry Partnerships: Challenge funds, milestone-based grants, and blended finance instruments to crowd in private capital and move technologies through pilot and early commercialization; explicitly designed around the economic viability and social acceptability questions that remain unresolved in the literature on circularity.

The program’s initial 24-36 month phase focuses on institutional establishment, early consortia activation, pilot engineering and construction, and the launch of standards/metrology and training platforms — delivering early proof of capability while establishing a scalable, long-term pathway. The subsequent 3-5-year phase expands pilot and demonstration capacity, deepens cross-border specialization, and mobilizes larger private investment. Across both phases, a central goal remains constant: enabling Latin America to capture value and strategic position not by exporting more raw material, but by owning more of the knowledge, standards, and industrial learning that make critical minerals critical.