The New Scramble for Africa's Critical Minerals
March 28, 2026 · Frisian News
China, the United States, and European powers compete fiercely for African cobalt, lithium, and rare earths as global battery demand soars. African nations are beginning to demand better terms, but face pressure from all sides.
Trucks loaded with cobalt ore roll out of the Kasomeno mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo every week, bound for Chinese processing plants. What once moved at a trickle now flows in torrents. The DRC holds over 70 percent of global cobalt reserves, and the world's electric vehicle factories hunger for every ounce. Beijing controls the supply chains. Western capitals watch with alarm.
The race for Africa's mineral wealth mirrors the old colonial grab, but with faster timelines and sharper teeth. China locked in long-term contracts years ago and built refineries across Africa. The United States and European Union woke late to the game. Now they offer loans, infrastructure deals, and diplomatic courting to African leaders who have learned to play competitors against each other. Zambia, Tanzania, and Guinea negotiate from stronger positions than they did five years ago, yet they remain vulnerable to commodity price swings and the whims of foreign investors.
American and European firms talk of "fair competition" and "ethical mining" while Chinese companies simply show up with money and machinery. African governments extract what they can from both, but the terms remain unequal. A cobalt miner in Katanga earns a few dollars a day. The refined mineral sells for hundreds. The profits flow outward, not inland. Neither Western nor Eastern capital has fundamentally changed this extraction model.
Infrastructure projects follow mineral deals. Chinese loans build ports and railways that move ore faster to the coast. Western consortiums promise green hydrogen plants and value-added processing on African soil, though few have materialized. Local communities see dust, water pollution, and jobs that vanish when prices drop. Government corruption steals what wealth remains. The scramble enriches capitals in Beijing, Washington, and Brussels, not villages in Katanga or Lusaka.
Africa's governments know this asymmetry now. They talk of regional cooperation, mineral cartels modeled on OPEC, and demands for local refining and manufacturing. Whether they can act on such talk depends on whether they resist the pressure to sell fast and cheap. The stakes are high. The West's green transition rests on African minerals. So does China's dominance in battery tech. Neither will yield ground without a fight.
Published March 28, 2026 · Frisian News