Recent United States initiatives aimed at developing closer ties with resource-rich African countries to break China’s stranglehold on critical minerals processing are still a long way from paying off, according to a leading geopolitical analyst.
Africa is home to about 30% of proven critical mineral reserves, and several African countries’ reserves leading the world, the Washington-based Brookings Institution said in a report published last month. Some 35 African countries produce at least one critical mineral – and that’s probably an underestimation, given the low level of exploration on the continent, the report’s authors said.
China’s lead in Africa – the result of a more than two-decade headstart built on signing infrastructure deals in exchange for mineral rights access – may well prove insurmountable, said Amaka Anku, who heads the Africa practice of Eurasia Group, a New York-based political risk research and consulting firm. Asia’s second-most populous country holds the largest portfolio of critical minerals projects in Africa, having invested billions of dollars in countries such as Botswana, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Zambia.
“It remains to be seen” whether the U.S. will be successful in carving out a bigger share of Africa’s critical minerals production, the Nigerian-born Anku said in an interview. “It’s much too early to celebrate any real shift.”
The China factor
Recent moves by China – the world’s biggest refiner and processor of critical minerals, with a global share estimated at 85% to 90% – have given new impetus to the U.S. drive to diversify its supply sources.
Late last year, China banned exports to the U.S. of gallium, germanium, antimony and other key high-tech materials with potential military applications.
It also suspended exports of six heavy rare earth metals, as well as rare earth magnets, in a bid to choke off supplies of components central to automakers, aerospace manufacturers, semiconductor companies and military contractors around the world.
Transactional Trump
Since taking office in January, President Donald Trump has broken with the traditional U.S. strategy of tying trade benefits to human rights objectives by adopting a more transaction-centered push. Trump administration officials have also sought to engage with individual countries instead of striking regional deals.
“This current Trump administration is very much transactional,” Anku said. “They want to do as many deals as possible, deals that benefit Trump-affiliated businesspeople. They also want African countries to invest in America. There is no altruism.”
A much-ballyhooed U.S.-brokered peace accord between the DRC and Rwanda, which aimed to end fighting in eastern DRC, illustrates this new mindset.
Under the deal, signed June 27, both African countries agreed to a “Regional Economic Integration Framework” that sets out shared priorities such as a “de-risking of mineral supply chains” and “transparent, formalized end-to-end mineral value chains, from mine to processed metal.”
US self-interest
Critics such as the Oakland Institute, a California-based think tank, say the accord isn’t so much a peace agreement as a way for the U.S. to secure access to Congolese minerals. Trump himself told reporters in June that the U.S. would get “a lot of the mineral rights from the Congo.”
Ivanhoe Mines’ Kamoa-Kakula copper mine in DRC. Credit: Ivanhoe Mines
Weeks later, U.S.-based explorer KoBold Metals secured seven new permits to search for lithium and other critical minerals in the DRC. The licences were granted just weeks after the Berkeley, Calif.-based company – whose backers include billionaires Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates – signed an exploration pact with the Congolese government as part of a broader push to attract American investment into the country’s mining sector.
“The incorporation of ‘formalized‘ mineral supply chains from eastern DRC to Rwanda exposes the pact’s true aim: Securing access to and control over minerals under the guise of diplomacy and regional integration,” the Oakland Institute said in its October report. “Framed as peacemaking, this is part of United States’ broader geopolitical struggle with China for control over critical resources.”
Peace, however, has proved fleeting. As press time neared, the conflict pitting the M23 rebel group against government forces showed no signs of ending. The DRC government has repeatedly blamed illegal mining of minerals such as cobalt for fuelling violence by armed militias.
Congo is the world’s largest producer of cobalt and the second-largest source of copper. It also hosts vast reserves of lithium and tantalum.
Not just Trump
U.S. efforts to strengthen the country’s critical minerals supply chain by reducing its dependence on China predate the Trump administration.
In 2023, under former president Joe Biden, U.S. officials held talks with African countries such as Botswana, Zambia and the DRC as part of an international forum known as the Mineral Security Partnership, or MSP, to discuss challenges and opportunities in Africa’s critical mineral sector.
The MSP is an alliance of 14 countries – including Canada, France and Germany – that aims to speed up “the development of diverse critical minerals supply chains in cooperation with industry and other governments to support strategic projects.” It considers projects ranging from mining and extraction to processing, refining and recycling – focusing on metals and minerals such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, manganese, antimony and copper.
$609M for projects
Washington’s main conduit for backing projects in Africa is the government agency known as the Development Finance Corporation, or DFC.
Last December, during the first-ever state visit of a U.S. president to Angola, the DFC agreed to lend up to $553 million to upgrade the Lobito railway, a 1,300-km rail line that links the port of Lobito to the city of Luau, on the border with the DRC. Biden hailed the project as “the biggest American rail investment outside of America.”
The Lobito railway competes with the Chinese-backed Tanzania-Zambia railway, which links the two countries and ends at the port of Dar Es Salaam.
In July, the DFC’s board of directors approved two unidentified “strategic transactions” in Sub-Saharan Africa “that will drive economic development and prosperity in the region as well strengthen U.S. critical mineral supply chains essential to advancing U.S. economic growth, security, and innovation in energy, defense, and advanced technologies.”
Citing “market sensitivity,” the DFC did not identify the projects or the companies involved.
Recent public commitments by the DFC in African mining include a $3.4 million technical assistance grant for Angola’s Longonjo rare earths project; a $50 million equity investment in South Africa’s Phalaborwa rare earths project and a $3.2 million grant for Chillerton’s copper mining project in Zambia.
Still, by Chinese standards, U.S. commitments to African projects remain extremely limited, says Eurasia Group’s Anku.
“It’s dribs and drabs,” she said. “I don’t see a groundswell of U.S. companies investing in Africa. I see some steps in that direction, but I don’t see anything at scale. Until I see real numbers follow this, I remain skeptical.”
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