The New Economic Frontier of The Commonwealth: Hirander Misra in A Fireside Chat With Samantha Cohen CVO OBE, CEO of CWEIC

Hirander Misra, CEO of GMEX Group and ZERO13, discusses green assets, critical minerals, AI and the rewiring of global capital in a fireside chat at the recent Commonwealth Trade and Investment Summit (CTIS) 2026 hosted by Samantha Cohen CVO OBE, CEO of Commonwealth Enterprise and Investment Council (CWEIC).

As geopolitical fragmentation reshapes the architecture of global trade and finance, a new economic map is emerging - one increasingly defined by strategic resources, trusted networks, and sovereign control over real-world assets.

For Hirander, this moment represents more than market disruption. It is a historic opportunity for the Commonwealth to reposition itself at the centre of the next industrial era.

The convergence of AI infrastructure, critical minerals, climate finance and digital asset infrastructure is creating the foundations for a new sovereign economic model. This model is capable of narrowing the long-standing imbalance between capital-rich economies in the Global North and resource-rich economies across the Global South. This is ‘the AI resource loop’, according to Hirander.

Critical minerals and the future of capital formation

“The Commonwealth is incredibly powerful. 40% of the world’s critical minerals reside across the Commonwealth,” Misra said during the discussion, held at the historic Mansion House in the City of London.

Those minerals underpin the modern industrial economy: semiconductors, batteries, renewable energy systems, defence technologies, electric vehicles, and increasingly the explosive expansion of AI-driven data infrastructure.

Yet despite controlling a substantial proportion of the world’s natural resources, many emerging economies continue to capture only a fraction of downstream value creation.

“Africa as a whole contains around 30% of the world’s critical minerals, but only one to three percent is actually supplied from Africa.”

That imbalance sits at the core of a broader thesis emerging across global markets extending well beyond carbon markets and sustainability finance. Digital infrastructure has to enable green and natural real-world assets (RWAs), integrating blockchain, AI-enabled digital monitoring, tokenisation and institutional settlement infrastructure to connect sovereign assets with global capital markets.

Increasingly, the next phase of global competition is becoming a contest over:

Access to minerals
Energy security
Trusted supply chains
Climate-aligned capital
Ownership of strategic physical and digital infrastructure.

In this environment, the Commonwealth possesses structural advantages that historically have been underestimated.

Trust as an infrastructure

Hirander discussed with Samantha how geopolitical fragmentation is accelerating demand for trusted economic blocs built around legal familiarity, institutional compatibility and resilient trade relationships. That dynamic may, of course, favour Commonwealth nations, whose shared legal systems and commercial frameworks reduce friction in cross-border cooperation.

“Common legal systems are really important. Everyone’s then familiar with how to do business.”

This concept of trust sits at the centre of this architecture. There needs to be a “connective tissue” between fragmented markets, using digital infrastructure to link traditional finance with digital finance, sovereign assets with institutional investors and physical commodities with tokenised ownership frameworks.

At a time when investors are recalibrating exposure to supply chain vulnerabilities and geopolitical risk, the ability to establish trusted provenance and transparent ownership is becoming increasingly valuable.

In this perspective, Hirander emphasises on “source-to-sale provenance” to highlight this shift.

Through blockchain-enabled digital measurement, reporting and verification (dMRV), physical assets - from carbon credits to mineral concessions and restoration projects - can be monitored, verified and monetised with greater transparency and interoperability.

Climate finance for emerging markets

The implications extend well beyond ESG compliance. One of the most consequential developments in global finance is the growing convergence between climate markets and strategic commodity systems. The most effective strategic frameworks increasingly need to link power generation, semiconductors, data centres, critical minerals, decarbonisation activities and tokenised green financial products within a single interconnected economic stack.

In practice, this means countries rich in minerals, energy assets and natural capital may be able to leverage those assets not merely as export commodities, but as the foundation for new sovereign financial structures; this could alter materially how climate finance flows into emerging markets.

Fragmented standards, inconsistent infrastructure and weak interoperability continue to inhibit efficient capital allocation into high-impact projects across the Global South. Digitisation and tokenisation can help close that gap by making assets investable, traceable and globally distributable.

“When aligned with income-generating green assets and financial products, carbon credits become a revenue opportunity, not a cost.”

The next phase of commonwealth growth

The broader objective is not simply sustainability, but economic rebalancing that will shift the conventional narrative about ‘corporate, colonist, self-interest’ to an opportunity for these nations to generate real economic value. That value lies in local beneficiation, sovereign participation in value chains and the ability of developing economies to retain far greater ownership over the monetisation of their natural capital. For Commonwealth nations, the implications could be profound.

Rather than being primarily suppliers of raw materials to advanced economies, member nations could increasingly participate in higher-value layers of processing, financing, tokenisation, digital infrastructure and environmental asset markets. In Misra’s view, achieving that transition requires collaboration, interoperability and a willingness to rethink financial infrastructure itself.

“It’s collaboration and creativity”, concludes Hirander.

Behind that phrase sits a far larger proposition: that the Commonwealth could become one of the defining economic corridors of the next climate and AI-driven industrial age.